When it comes to age on the ballot, Texas didn’t wait until 2024 to weigh in.
Asked to let judges stay on the bench until they’re 79 years old — a year younger than President Joe Biden — Texas voters soundly rejected the proposal in Tuesday’s elections, a defeat that drew new attention to issues of age and fitness for office in the U.S.
“Age is front of mind for American voters in a way that it has not traditionally been and they are nervous about it,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.
Others cautioned against broader takeaways. At least four other states have rejected similar proposals over the last decade, according to the National Center for State Courts. And states that have passed the measures have mostly done so in close votes.
Get ready for an unpopular opinion: Old age should not be a basis on which someone is disqualified from holding office.
Why not? Because it is wrong to cast aspersions on someone because of something they did not choose. It remains appropriate to only qualify people for elected office if they are old enough, because we want people to have enough perspective and life experience, and that is directly related to being old enough.
Saying a class of people shouldn’t be making rights for the country when they won’t be around to see the consequences isn’t casting aspersions on anyone.
Pretending we dont decline mentally past the age of 80 is a very stupid take.
These are the people who lead our communities. We need them to be in peak mental health.
Then disqualify people on the basis of mental decline.
Or we can disqualify them based on “we know youre declining because of basic biological fact, and you dont need to be so fucking obsessed with power that you cling to it at 80 fucking years old, step down and retire.”
Why does it have to be either or?
And we’ve seen how well that’s been working for aging boomer politicians…
Look at Feinstein. They literally had to pry that seat from her cold dead fingers.
Ideally, you’re correct and I would agree. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works in reality.
I’ll counter with the example of Bernie Sanders, who is 82 years old, still sharp as a tack, and arguably the furthest left person in the federal government. Jimmy Carter is 99 years old, and while I know we’re not hearing much from him anymore, he’s been an incredible force for good well into his nineties. (Yes, I know he hasn’t held elected office since early 1981, but he damned well could have, and done it well.)
Yes, Feinstein should have retired a very long time ago, not because of her age, but because of her mental decline.
Don’t make policy based on outliers. If we didn’t have half the shit-eating boomers still in government we could have 100 Bernies. Maybe even a real left party.
Don’t make policy based on outliers.
The way to avoid that, and to respect individual differences, is with standardized periodic testing, which I would support for sure.
Of course, standardized testing. Thats never failed categorically to assess entire generations on a grand sweeping scale.
it is wrong to cast aspersions on someone because of something they did not choose.
Maybe it’s not about casting aspersions but rather fitness for the job. If a surgeon loses their arms in a tragic accident they probably won’t be allowed to operate. Pilots are forced to retire at a certain age because of this well documented age-related decline. If natural mental decline from age impairs one’s ability to make fair and reasonable judgements and/or causes one to lose touch with the society they are resolving conflicts within, that seems like it would similarly impair a judge’s ability to effectively do their job.
It remains appropriate to only qualify people for elected office if they are old enough,
Fun fact: it’s legal to discriminate in the US based on age. But only towards younger, not older. You can’t discriminate because someone is too old, but you CAN if they are “too young”.
My concern is judges that old not understanding the modern way of life for most people.
The life of a moden 25 year old and a 75 year old judge when he was 25 are so different they may as well have been from opposite ends of the world.
Elderly judges means that solutions of the past have longer tails, as our laws become less likely to be interpreted to adapt to the realities of today. I suspect keeping more conservative judges on the bench after the judicial blue wave hit Texas was the point of this amendment.
The media cracks me up.
“None of these really good election results have anything to do with Joe Biden in 2024. Except the results that we can twist into being bad for him, those matter.”
I wouldn’t say the media under covered the Democratic wins. I also think there’s still real reason to worry about how Biden fares next year, because he is underperforming compared to the average dem. I’m worried young voters abandon him precisely because of his age. Without the unprecedented surge in youth voting in 2020, Trump wins.
It’s long past time to get the generation of lead-induced dementia patients out of office. Slow Biden, Glitch McConnell, and all of their geriatric ilk need to go.
Lead-induced?
I think this is the only thing on that ballot that I voted for that went my way. It’s like the only reasonable thing that won.
Read how misleading some of this shit was written:
Ratifying the ad valorem tax rate of $0.9746 per $100 valuation in Creek School District for the current year, a rate that will result in an increase of -19.87 percent in maintenance and operations tax revenue for the District for the current year as compared to the preceding year, which is an additional $-50,585,883.
It will “increase” by a negative amount! It’s so fucked up.
“Age is front of mind for American voters in a way that it has not traditionally been and they are nervous about it,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.
Um, yeah, because never was normal to have so many 75+ year olds in power. They need to retire. And yes, that includes Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The Silent Generation and Boomers ran this country into the ground and never gave up that power.
I would, at the very least, have all judges and politicians retire once they reach the expected lifespan for their demographic. Men born in your birth year have a life expectancy of 68? You retire by 68. A life expectancy of 84? You retire by 84.
We have age limits that state how old you need to be to run for office, I see the logic in setting limits. It’s just hard because a 75 year old can seem like they’re about to curl over and die or they can be just as sharp as a 55 year old. On one hand, with age they have a ton of knowledge and experience, on the other, their cohort is rapidly dwindling and their ability to relate to the shared experience of younger cohorts is deminished. Ultimately for me, officials that have to run for reelection i think we should let the voters decide if that person is fit, but for judges with lifetime appointments we need to have some sort of cut off.
Do you think Texas would be on board for this as a rule for the Supreme Court, where the two oldest justices are Thomas and Alito?
