Can someone give a QRD on all of the political ramifications that will come from this? I've heard things about judges being harder to appoint, what else is there?
The governor of California can turn around an interim appointment pretty quickly if he so chooses; there's some static around a prior promise to appoint a Black woman, which most people viewed as effectively a promise to Representative Barbara Lee. She has since declared candidacy for that Senate seat--as Feinstein was not going to run for re-election--and Newsom (understandably, IMO) doesn't want to hand the keys to a running candidate, out of fairness to the also-quite-reasonable alternate candidates.
That said, I wouldn't expect it to prevent a pretty quick replacement if Senate business demands it, so it likely won't be a significant impact from a political or operational perspective.
> “Yes. Interim appointment. I don’t want to get involved in the primary,” Newsom said. “It would be completely unfair to the Democrats that have worked their tail off. That primary is just a matter of months away. I don’t want to tip the balance of that.”
Holy moly. "I wouldn't want an interim appointment I make to be political" is a silly enough sentiment that it cannot possibly be sincere. He just didn't know what the right move was yet, in terms of how he would benefit.
If I recall correctly, the Republicans can refuse to allow a replacement to be seated on the Judiciary committee…and they certainly will do that if they can.
I believe committee membership votes are currently subject to a supermajority, so filibuster rules apply. There won't be a new member seated to Judiciary without a Senate rules package. Sen. Manchin (D) likely won't allow that to happen.
This means judicial nominations are effectively hamstrung for the time being.
The Republicans can't block anything unless the democrats agree to allow it.
Like yes there are a lot of self-imposed rules in the Senaate, but it's fundamentally on the Democrats that they can't pull together 51 votes to tweak the rules.
Whoops - I was reading a list of vacancies/recent resignations and thought a House one was a Senate one as they were commingled. You're right, there are 47 Democrats and 3 Independents.
Doesn't change that they won't do anything, of course. :|
> Feinstein’s current term isn’t up until 2024, so should her seat become vacant before then, it would be up to Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat, to appoint a temporary replacement. Newsom, like most governors, would have no restrictions on whom he could appoint – other than the constitutional age, citizenship and residency requirements that apply to all senators.
Newsom can replace her fairly quickly, so it won't have major impact on critical Senate votes.
But, her death leaves her committee seats open. Filling those seats will take time and where she was in a leadership position, that needs resolved. Committees often have a 1-vote edge to the majority party, so those committees may be effectively deadlocked until replacements are nominated/approved (this is almost exclusively a Senate task - so can the Democratic leadership in the Senate get new members into committees in a timely manner).
From everything I could tell, one of the reasons Sen Feinstein was sticking around was that the GOP had indicated it would not allow Senate Democrats to replace her on the Judiciary committee. This would deadlock the committee, effectively stalling all judicial appointments and confirmations.
That was in the case of a retirement. This is a death and reappointment. I am unsure if the new Senator would assume Sen Feinstein's previous committee assignments, but all of my instincts around the Senate say no. So we are back in the position of relying on the GOP to allow the new Senator to fully serve and represent the 39 million citizens of California. If you know anything about the modern GOP and their despise for democracy, you know they will never let that happen.
Sorry, California, the 39 million of you only get 1.3 senators for the next 15 months. The 576 thousand people of Wyoming will still get their full 2.
Literally not how things work. The last time states tried to secede a little thing called the Civil War happened and we determined that no, actually you can’t just leave the US whenever you feel like it.
There is nothing in the constitution that says states can't secede. Just because some people in the 1800s went to war over it doesn't mean people in 2100's have to kill each other. Peaceful secession is always an option.
I can't remember where I heard this, but the reason that every state gets 2 senators goes back to the creation of the United States. If they didn't allow equal representation, why would any state join if they immediately started with less than equal rep? For example, why would a small state with a population 10x less than New York for example, join the US and accept 10x less senators.
Caveat - I'm not American and have never taken a US history class. This is just something I heard on a podcast.
This is more or less correct. The idea was that all states were to have equal amounts of sovereignty, regardless of population. Bodies like the UN only have 1 delegate at a time. Well, the US allows them to have a backup in the Senate.
Also, the intended function of the Senate was to oversee process and senators were selected by state legislators. They are not supposed to originate legislation. But it got a bit twisted up since then.
I think this is a bit off. I don't think the GOP in the Senate can stop California from appointing Feinstein's replacement, or keep them from being admitted to the Senate. They can keep the replacement from being appointed to the Judiciary Committee, but that is not an inherent right for senators from California.
California can appoint an interim Senator (per their constitutional & laws - I believe the governor does it without any approval from other parties).
Committee appointment is by Senate rules. There's no automatic right to a seat on a committee. Judiciary is a massively important committee because it oversees the approval of federal judges (without committee approval, the nominees never get to the floor for a vote).
The GOP can block a committee replacement via filibuster. The Democrats could attempt a rules package to prevent filibuster, but Manchin (D-WV) has historically been against those.
> Sorry, California, the 39 million of you only get 1.3 senators for the next 15 months.
No they get two. Just as Wyoming, which is how the country has always worked and is the only reason the country exists in the first place. I’ve no idea where you pulled “1.3” from but this has always been and remains such an insufferable talking point from left leaning people, the United States is just that, a republican union of states, larger states specifically should not be able to impose their rule on smaller states.
> Sorry, California, the 39 million of you only get 1.3 senators for the next 15 months. The 576 thousand people of Wyoming will still get their full 2.
The purpose of a senator is to represent the state, not the people. That's why in the US Constitution it says that senators will be elected by state legislators (later changed by the 17th amendment to be elected by the people).
Representatives represent the people. That's why the number of representatives is proportional to the population of the state, and the senators are proportional to the states (there's approx. 1 state per state).
She was mentally unfit to serve for the last couple years. It was a travesty many countries seem to have no mental bar required to serve or even reasonable age limits (Feinstein was 90!) Any decision "she" was made in the last couple years was made by her aids and not her. This is not how democracy is supposed to work.
Details:
> Four U.S. senators, including three Democrats, as well as three former Feinstein staffers and the California Democratic member of Congress told The Chronicle in recent interviews that her memory is rapidly deteriorating. They said it appears she can no longer fulfill her job duties without her staff doing much of the work required to represent the nearly 40 million people of California.
With our aging population, we need to figure out how to be inclusive of those who can contribute, while identifying those who can not. Hard age limits are likely becoming less desirable as the population ages - retirement at 55 will seem like a joke. But that doesn't mean we should just accept people who are not with it in various positions of power.
Between her and McConnell and the other gerontocrats in Washington, I’m really baffled. Why do these people grip the reins of power until their knuckles turn white? What is so important about political horse trading that they have to literally haul you out of office on a stretcher?
It would require voting for the other party. The big issue is the parties being willing to back aging candidates. But of course, party leaders are just as old -- so they see no problem.
There's more than two parties. Nobody is forcing you to vote for one of them. Parties are also an anti-pattern. Again we need a better system than first past the post that naturally biases towards a two party system.
Party primaries devolve into 'the devil you know vs the devil you dont' and the Devil You Know usually has a boatload of cash to spend on the campaign that the Devil You Dont doesn't have. You are right of course, the solution lies in eliminating the party system and implementing a ranked voting system of some kind.
Due to practicality and congressional gridlock, this has to happen state by state, and in many states the 'easiest' method is some sort of ballot initiative. I encourage anyone who reads this to look up the process in their state (https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_ballot_measures_by_state) and at least try to get a signature out to one so they show up on the ballot.
All other things being equal it is in their best interest to re-elect the incumbent. Seniority and connections figure into what posts you get and what influence you have. McConnell's and Feinstein's constituents have an outsized influence on the proceedings. Why would Kentuckians cede control of the Senate in favor of a politician, no matter how skilled, who had zero seniority?
I'm not especially in favor of short term limits, since there is a benefit to politicians with experience. But I'd definitely consider options that better balance their reasonable desire to elect experienced and influential candidates with the very heavy hand that experience puts on everybody else.
And voting for the party is sensible. Most important votes happen along party lines. Including the most important, for Speaker and Majority Leader, who set the agenda.
Most other votes will be largely sublimated to the party priorities. The individuals will determine the specific contents of what they're voting on, but in general the person from the other party is going to vote against the things you're most interested in. You may watch your party vote on things that aren't your favorite, but it's unlikely they'll be repugnant to you. That's how they got to be your allies.
If you want to get more involved than that, you show up for the primaries. That's a multi-way contest to find the person who best represents you and your allies. That's where the party priorities get set. People who vote only in the general election are missing out on the real work of politics.
Why do they cling to power? I imagine the personality type that seeks political power in the first place tends to want to keep it. It's good to be the king.
At the end of the day, the people continue to elect them. If voters were unhappy with Feinstein's performance (or that of her key aides), the solution was as simple as voting her out.
Name recognition is powerful.
Seniority leads to leadership of key committees in the US Congress.
But, I do agree that this is a problem. RBG was another example - had she retired a few years prior to her death, the state of SCOTUS would be very different today. Was she addicted to the power? Did she truly think nobody younger could do a better job? Same for Feinstein, McConnell, Biden, and many others on both sides of the aisle.
> If voters were unhappy with Feinstein's performance (or that of her key aides), the solution was as simple as voting her out.
Often these incompetent people are in "safe seat" regions. Either heavily democrat or republican. Voters won't switch parties just because representative is incompetent. There should be another options.
Feinstein was a Senator and CA uses a "jungle primary" for state-wide elections - there's no "safe seat" in that model.
In her last election, both final candidates were Democrats. Neither party could unseat her. Voters have been clear that they preferred Feinstein to anybody else.
So the question is why? Was it her power in the Senate? Was she particularly good at bringing pork to CA? Or was it just money and the political machine? Probably a lot of that last item - the parties themselves have incentives to keep winning politicians around - they're good for fund-raising.
The rules for rank in committees is per party and it’s only Democrats that have indefinite positions of seniority. Republicans have caps on number of terms as chair, etc.
The only people losing power with her early retirement would have been her handlers. She hasn’t made a decision on her own in a long time. And when she did pretend to do so, the handlers would “help her remember the right choice”.
Life or death. The mindset is that when they retire they have nothing to live for and will die soon after. The personality type required to get to a powerful position like Senator can also (frequently * ) not be able to conceive of a meaningful life after office.
Quitting office is like giving up on life for these people.
*Jimmy Carter is a good counter example. He found a meaningful purpose after holding a powerful office.
First, some places, like in McConnell's case, are just statistically going to go to a particular party, due to demographics (or gerrymandering), and primary elections famously don't draw people to the polls (if there's a challenger at all).
California and senate elections are slightly better in that regard, however, look at how much money Feinstein was able to raise over her opponents. This is nothing special about Feinstein, it's an advantage incumbents generally enjoy:
I think getting this money out of politics is a start to ensuring elections are based on the candidate themselves & their policies and less around how much special interests already have invested in them. I don't have any ideas about how to get more people to show up specifically for primary elections, but the ideas people have around getting more people to vote in general elections could help, like expanding absentee voting, making it a holiday, etc.
> The U.S. electorate is aging: 52% of registered voters are ages 50 and older, up from 41% in 1996. This shift has occurred in both partisan coalitions. More than half of Republican and GOP-leaning voters (56%) are ages 50 and older, up from 39% in 1996. And among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, half are 50 and older, up from 41% in 1996.
> Another way to consider the aging of the electorate is to look at median age. The median age among all registered voters increased from 44 in 1996 to 50 in 2019. It rose from 43 to 52 among Republican registered voters and from 45 to 49 among Democratic registered voters.
I think that on average, people consider age significant, so they expect their candidate to be around as old as them. I don't think it's the whole picture, but it helps me feel less baffled at least.
I think the reason is influence. Older people have accumulated more connections and therefore have more power and influence.
Their underlings support them because they lose access to a great influencer in case of removal.
It's more difficult for young people to rise up when there's very little influence to be had. However, in times of great upheaval young people tend to rise up much faster as the incompetent people at the top get removed.
Because, like most people, they want to feel they have purpose in their life. Giving up the job is almost like accepting death, especially if they are old.
Yes, and she's not the only one who is (edit: was) serving without being functional[1]. We need to start talking about upper age limits for public office. I believe it'd require a constitutional amendment, but I expect there's lots of support for it from all sides. I'd suggest 65 as a maximum age for being elected, which means one could serve to about age 71, for a six-year Senate term.
Are age limits viable in our aging population? I think they may not work because it would exclude so many people and many voters will be aged as well? I think a low bar competency test would be more viable.
I agree. It is just that people's facilities fall off at different rates, but as others pointed out, it is hard to make an objective test that also can not be gamed.
There's nothing to prevent an older politician from advising their colleagues, serving on committee staffs or even lobbying. They're not prevented from participantion, they'd be prevented from being elected.
It's just that that's not actually really important. The test of a good system is one that admits that its members will retire and adjusts accordingly.
In the military, you're always training a replacement, and come 65 (or 68), you're retiring, regardless of your capacity.
Politicians make up a tiny percentage of the population and babies haven't stopped being born at any point, so there will always be a population under 65 from which to elect people. If voters over 65 feel left out because they can't vote for someone their age bracket, I don't know what to tell them except "welcome to the party".
Weird SciFi idea: The human race is dying after such an amendment passes. The US Constitution finally crumbles because there is no one under 65 left in the country, making it ungovernable due to amendment ratification requirements.
The Church, which is certainly something of a gerontocracy, excludes the elderly Cardinals from Papal elections too. It's not intrinsically unjust anymore than excluding the very young is.
To be fair, that limit is 80 and likely has more to do with not forcing elderly Cardinals to travel (many would and even still do out of a feeling of duty; it's basically literally the only "job" a Cardinal has that's not just him being a bishop).
Currently, bishops are generally expected to submit their resignation to the pope upon turning 75 years old, although the pope may elect to retain the bishop.
And maybe elders should be excluded for the same reason!
That is: Why do we exclude people under 18 from voting? Because we think they don't have the mental tools to understand policy well enough to make an informed decision. Well, if seniors don't have the mental tools anymore, should they be allowed to vote?
And this is even stronger with holding office. You can vote at 18, but you can't be a representative until 25, or a senator until 35. Why? Because you need to be old enough to (hopefully) have some judgment. Well, what if you're too old to have judgment?
So, yeah, excluding seniors from office would in fact be reasonable. Or at least requiring an annual mental competency test.
Unfortunately, we'll never get it without a state-driven constitutional convention, because those with the most power in Congress are highly correlated with those with the highest age.
Remember that much of our current system has been a slow increase of the "popular" vote, from landholders to men to adults. At some point it'll go to "everyone above the age of 0" but let's not ignore that kids will at first vote the way their parents do, and then vote the exact opposite for awhile.
I don't think we need to assume that actual children will someday vote. It's not punitive to say that we should have some age threshold into adulthood and its responsibilities. There are so many facets of society that necessitate some degree of protection of young people that it isn't unfair or unrealistic to also create a barrier around their full participation in our Democratic society.
Why exactly should the elderly be exempt from proper representation? There are plenty of things to criticize Nancy Pelosi about, for example, but still she's more intelligent and coherent than 99% of Congress.
Those in their first ~2 decades of life have long been exempted from proper representation, and I've never heard the elderly complain about that. Having both ends cut off sounds more fair and balanced to me.
Comparing a child to someone in their 70s with a lifetime of experience is silly. Maybe there should be limits once in office at a certain age, but not everyone ages the same.
Having a lifetime of experience does not necessarily make someone smart, rational, or even coherent. It especially does not make someone interested in voting for changes that will improve the lives of people younger than them.
That’s why we have elections. Being youthful doesn’t imply any of those things either and guarantees limited experience. I’m not arguing that young people shouldn’t be in office. I’m just not sure an arbitrary age limit is appropriate either.
"Adolescence" was a made-up term to remove personal sovereignty over younger people who know full well, and would do, but aren't legally permitted to do so. They're also subject to our laws. They should have their say as well.
And then we see under-18 routinely be charged as adults.
And yes, if 15 year olds could vote and run for office, I do think we'd see more issues aimed at the younger generations ALONG WITH longer views of how our government is run. And we're seeing the judicial side of this with youngsters suing for climate devastation, like https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/08/1...
> There is truth to the idea that, whether due to life experience or brain development, teenagers struggle with proper decision-making.
I don't like the arbitrary nature of age cutoffs, but I would no longer support the idea of giving more political power to anyone under 18.
while that's just an anecdote, even if it were the norm, it is also the norm for old people of a sufficient age
if it makes you feel better, we can administer cognitive tests to old people and determine at what point they fall into "teenager" level of mental acuity
There is much less variance on cognitive ability on the younger end of our lives than the higher end. Arbitrary age limits in youth are unfair, but less unfair than the same on the upper end of life.
I had a friend who remained sharp until her mid 90s. I have family members who shouldn't be voting in their early 70s. That range is massive, whereas we can mostly agree that nearly all 14 year olds aren't capable, but most 20 year olds are - unfair but not as vast a range.
> There is much less variance on cognitive ability on the younger end of our lives than the higher end.
I'm not sure that's true. Mental maturity in kids varies widely, too. There are some pretty mentally mature kids changing the world. Look at Greta Thunberg.
There are also many fewer years for older people to live with the consequences of their votes. Everything has trade-offs. In this case, the loss would not be as bad as the loss we get from excluding those below 18.
Whatever the counterexample of sharp old people, I can think of one for sharp young people. We ignore those exceptions for young people, we can ignore them for old people, too. And if you're worried the old-age cutoff will be too young, just pick whatever age's median mental acuity matches 18 year olds - what's good for the gosling is good for the goose.
Your friend could still vote, just not run for office at 90 years old. This seems like a fine compromise to avoid the Feinstein/McConnell/RBG/etc pattern.
Part of the criminal justice system is removing dangerous people from society. Sometimes you can make this determination before their 18th birthday. In general I agree with you though.
> There's no way to separate the able minded from the seniles fairly, so an age limit is the best way to do it.
Sorry about your father, but there are plenty of 70 year olds who are extremely competent, capable and that also bring valuable connections and experience.
If you've been around many kids, you know that "18" is completely arbitrary, and adult-ish maturity comes to some far sooner than to others. (And to a few, it never does seem to come.)
And if you've been around many elderly people, you know that quite a few are less competent to vote than the average 14-year-old student council member, and that letting ~all of them do so is no less arbitrary than that "18".
They shouldn't, though Congress has a massive skew towards them. The median senator is on Social Security. The median House member is just shy of being able to make tax-free withdrawals from their 401(k)s.
The minimum ages necessarily put an upward skew on it, but very few are anywhere near the minimum. There is little need to ensure representation for the elderly. And meantime, anybody of working age is badly under-represented.
Very few young people have the privilege to afford campaigning. It makes sense most people able to do so are old enough to have the savings, skills or passive income that allows them the freedom to hit the campaign trail.
Which is yet more reason to give us something to put a thumb on the younger side of the scale.
An age limit would be a crude form of that. So would a term limit.
We could alter the seniority system that gives much more weight to people who have been there the longest. But that's a rule Congress passes for itself, and it's hard to imagine many incumbents giving up on a privilege they've been waiting for.
Say we have a professional psychiatrist, or a whole board of them, evaluating the mental competence of candidates. Occasionally they would designate one as incompetent, who would then be removed from the election.
This would seem to be less democratic rather than more. The voters have less options than before, so the shift in power is from voters to experts.
> There is no way to make it politically neutral and hard to game?
No. Psychiatry, like politics and law, depends much on the personal beliefs of the human in charge. Look at our supreme court. Justices are supposed to be impartial, but they still tend to decide cases based on their political leanings.
That's a feature, not a bug, of being human.
Do we really want political games around deciding who is fit or unfit for office? I can 100% guarantee that this will cause more shit-slinging from both sides at each other than meaningful action
There must be age limit for any job, including senators and presidents.
Or, test them for physicals and minds before they can take on the job, do it annually, it's a normal practice in all other fields, it's good for all sides.
It is how it’s supposed to work. She was 85 when she got elected the last time. If voters don’t want 90 year olds in office, maybe they shouldn’t vote 85 year olds in for a 6 year term. If she can’t be beat in a primary, then we need something like ranked choice voting so people can safely vote for an alternative third party without risking spoiling the election for a candidate they definitely don’t want.
The problem is first past the post is in the running for the worst way to run a democracy, so basically any reform option would work, and it's hard to get consensus around change.
Proportional has other flaws too, like small parties playing 'kingmaker'. As in: say the two major parties each get 45%, and I run an outfit that got 10%. To have a majority, you're going to have to deal with me, so I'm going to have way more influence than my 10% would warrant.
A proportional system will still have one of the primary issues with the current system: the parties choose their representatives, and the two major ones will continue to trot out just the worst people they can find.
(Yes, there are primaries, but the DNC and RNC hold an astronomical amount of power in picking the candidates and influencing the winners.)
But that's not a problem when you can just defect from the major parties with no penalty. The major parties are only able to continually put up garbage candidates because there are no other options.
Ranked voting for single offices (president, governor, etc), and proportional for any representative body, like the House and Senate.
Or, if the Senate is really meant to represent the states rather than the people, it should only be concerned with state issues: which issues belong at the federal level, and which at the state level, for example.
I encourage you to run a campaign, just in a local county. You will find there are things one can't see from the outside that make this sentiment naively false.
My wife was part of a congressional primary campaign so I got to see some of this close-up. It’s hard to list all the reasons, but there is definitely a sort of institutional inertia that makes it hard to primary someone on the story of merely being the better candidate, unless there is an a prior consensus among voters that the incumbent needs to go.
Some examples:
- Congressional elections are expensive; incumbents have deeper-rooted donor networks to tap.
- Civic groups that are already working with the incumbent want to continue the relationship.
- General voter apathy around primary elections; even regular voters often skip primaries so finding people who will actually vote gets harder.
- Name recognition; if someone shows up to the polls to vote for another ballot item but hasn't followed the congressional race, they'll probably put a box next to the incumbent unless they have a particular reason not to.
I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing -- high turnover of elected officials is disruptive to the system -- but there are clearly cases in which it overcorrects.
The part about voter apathy towards primaries is important. It means that the sort of people who vote in primaries don't represent an unbiased sample of their party: they skew towards the extremes, because those people can be more easily mobilized. This means that primaries don't produce candidates capable of representing the median voter very well, and we end up with a choice between the canonical Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich. That's why the Freedom Caucus doesn't want McCarthy to use funding to influence primaries in their states; it would allow him to enforce party discipline on them.
This becomes even worse when combined with "safe" districts where whoever wins the primary for the district's ruling party is nearly guaranteed to win the general election as well. It makes one wonder how democratic we should consider such an election to be.
All this is to say that it's important to not just look at whether an institution is democratic in form, but whether it is also democratic in outcomes. The Law of Unintended Consequences will be obeyed.
The voters don't get what they want, they get what you offer them. With a good marketing budget, you might be able to convince voters to want what you're offering them. That's called Manufactured Demand.
Other comments have gotten at the nuts and bolts of administrations, and here's the PR side of it:
Do the 'Mom Test' on any candidate and you will see why 9 out of 10 times a challenger to an incumbent fails [0]. The only challengers who succeed beat the 'good enough test' while simultaneously fending off the current administration's inertia (aptly put by paulgb)
It’s running through questions like so: When you have an issue with county government, how do you handle it?
Their answer will tell you many things. Is it actually a concern the county can address? If it is not an issue the county can address, why do they think it is? If it’s a strong held belief, what experiences solidified it (buying a lot and being told one thing by a realtor, for example) - etc. you then use all of that to create a product (a campaign messaging) that aligns with the candidate and public’s opinion / current default mode.
The "Mom Test" is a term from a book by Rob Fitzpatrick titled "The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you". It is about customer development and strategies for entrepreneurs to properly validate their business ideas.
The title refers to the notion that even your mom, who generally loves you unconditionally, would lie to you to spare your feelings if your business idea wasn’t good. So, the "Mom Test" suggests a method of asking the right questions to get honest and useful feedback from people, including those who might be predisposed to be nice to you.
The key principles of the Mom Test are:
Talk about their life instead of your idea: Ask about specific behaviors and thoughts in their past and present, not about hypothetical futures. Avoid asking whether they think your business idea is good. Instead, focus on their problems, pains, and needs related to the area your business is focused on.
Ask for specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future: People's predictions about their future behaviors are typically inaccurate. By asking about their past actions, you can gather more reliable information.
Talk less and listen more: This is about them, not about you or your idea. The goal is to gather insights, so avoid leading questions and let them do the talking.
By following these principles, entrepreneurs can gather real insights into customer needs and challenges, which is crucial for validating and improving business ideas.
1) You opponents campaign manager will lie about their candidate without qualms.
2) Donors will give money to a scoundrel, as long as they think the scoundrel will win.
3) Voters are actually good at picking up bullshit - in aggregate.
4) Rich white liberal female voters will not vote for a man.
5) Plenty of Black, Asian, and Immigrant voters are conservative, but many reflexively vote liberal.
6) Do it, even if you lose by a small amount like I did, you'll learn a lot and have a lot of fun
I grew a lot and made a lot of friends in so many communities, and I learned from immigrants about the values my great grandparents also had.
I'm conservative and found that I have so much in common with so many people that I'm sort of pissed that our culture has done it's best to keep us apart.
Thanks for this analysis. I feel like there is a big diconnect between what groups of people are assumed to be like vs what they actually do. Point 5 being the most apparent for me
Ranked choice voting (the brand name for Instant Runoff or Hare voting) neither theoretically [0] nor empirically [1] has the outcomes for third parties that you think it does. This combined with its other flaws makes it worse than plurality.
Not only that, it doesn't allow for distributed counts [2], it can wreck the secret ballot [3], and it is not monotonic [4]. Arrow gives us an impossibility result for elections but monotonicity is the worst criterion to give up, especially when the system has so many other flaws.
The real problem with RCV is that it doesn't intuitively make sense to an average person. I wrote a web app for RCV and spent months trying to build a user experience that would help people understand the concept and it just doesn't work.
People come to the question of voting assuming it's easy to understand...We've never had to deal with complexity around the concept so we expect it to be simple.
Introducing an algorithm plays into the fears of people who believe in a deep state which is secretly trying to manipulate people.
We deeply need a better voting system, but one of the core requirements must be that one can explain it to a middle schooler in 30 seconds.
When I tested out of high school, one of the test questions gave you a list of planets and their diameters.
The multiple choice question was: which of these answers lists the planets in order from smallest to largest diameter?
This was for a high school diploma equivalent! I was stumped for a while wondering if I was understanding the question correctly.
Anyway, I passed the test, but the fact this question was on there gave me serious doubts as to the general skill of the populace. I'm a fan of RCV over the current system, but I know it's going to trip a lot of people up.
With any RCV method, you win because math says so. In a normal election you count.
It's basically 100% guaranteed that someone who won most first choices but lost the election will try to delegitimize the election with stupid populism.
The first and most important job of an election is to ensure peaceful transfer of power.
My favorite alternate system is approval voting. Vote any number of candidates rather than just one. Most votes wins. 5 seconds and no nerd required.
When do you think some third party is going to arise out of the broken cesspool of one-party machine politics in the state of dementia known as California? Please, fill us in.
We should have the ability to do a recall when mental faculties come into question. Have a bare minimum mental fitness test: Time awareness, location awareness, action consequence relationship, grade 6 comprehension and control over bodily functions
Weekend at Bernie's should remain a farce and not a commentary on reality.
Has many advantages over RCV / IRV (Ranked Choice Voting / Instant Runoff Voting). For one - no need to change ballots; educating the public is a single sentence rather than a more-complicated explanation.
Doesn’t seem to allow people to express their natural feelings. RCV does. I absolutely have a favorite. And I want to be able to encode that. I also have a 2nd choice, and so on.
Imagine a case where I really really want one guy, and between the remaining two I have a strong preference for one over the other. RCV lets me express that.
Approval would have been stuck. Should I mention the 2nd guy? I do want them if it came to having to choose but I’d hate to place them on even footing with my top top pick.
this is a common intuition-based fallacy. i'm an expert with almost 20 years of experience working in this field with various phd's in political science, math, and game theory. i explain this here:
tl;dr - for any two candidates, X and Y, the voters who approve only one of them express a "ranked preference" between them. and because those voters are, on average, a good statistical sample of the X-vs-Y preference of the entire electorate, approval voting turns out to measure voter preferences very accurately.
whereas instant runoff voting can actually have much bigger problems in preference detection because it only looks at one layer of preferences at a time. for example:
35% left center
33% right center
32% center
in this example, center is preferred to both the left and the right by a LANDSLIDE 2/3rds majority, yet is the first candidate eliminated. this happens because of "vote splitting" (spoiler effect) between the two more partisan candidates. so it might _feel_ like you expressed your preferences better. but you didn't really.
and what about STRATEGIC VOTING?
if right wins, then the left supporters will wish they had strategically voted for center to prevent that. and if left wins, then right supporters will wish they had strategically voted for center to prevent that.
approval voting satisfies the "favorite betrayal criterion", which means it cannot possibly hurt you to support your sincere favorite candidate.
A major, important difference between the two is that a median HN user can read the Wikipedia page on STAR voting and come away not fully understanding it and have further questions (do score difference magnitudes matter in the runoff? Or only which is higher?).
Meanwhile approval voting is exhaustively explained by "vote for as many candidates as you like. Candidate with the most votes wins."
A "more optimal" voting system doesn't exist in a vacuum, public understanding and trust make a voting system more optimal. Just not more mathematically optimal.
cardinal (rated) voting methods are better than ordinal (ranked). so score voting, approval voting, and star voting are all good.
approval voting is just score voting on a 0-1 binary scale. star voting is score voting on a 0-5 scale, followed by an "instant runoff" between the top two highest rated candidates.
> public understanding and trust make a voting system more optimal.
star voting: score the candidates from 0 - 5 and the winner is the majority favorite between the two highest rated overall.
there's no risk with public understanding here. i've worked on this subject since 2006, and conducted exit polls with score voting ballots within months of getting into this issue. people understand it just fine. it's radically simpler than ranking.
RCV advocates miss the point entirely. It's not that people want to vote for third parties but can't. It's that the candidates that survive the major parties' primary elections have only to pander to their insane bases. In California where no-party-indicateds outnumber Republicans, the top-2 system is effectivley a Democratic primary.
Alaska has the right idea: a jungle primary where the top-4 advance, followed by an RCV general. RCV by itself doesn't do much. You have to weaken the primary electorate, as Alaska does.
If you're going to lay responsibility at the feet of the voters it isn't fair to throw out a "It is how it’s supposed to work.". The voters decide how it is supposed to work by making arguments and talking to each other and expressing opinions. If voters have power then expressing what qualities a politician should have helps the process.
And while ranked choice voting is probably superior, it'd be a lot easier for one of the parties to implement RCV internally then call it a day. The major problem is that the primary system is too incumbent-friendly, making it hard for challengers to grow organically.
And I don't buy the argument that the US Congress Regulars have done a good job. They look like they've mucked a lot of stuff up, badly, and left a series of ruins behind them. Literally in many cases.
She held a position of incredible importance (chair of the senate judiciary committee). Her leaving would cause a stalemate and block all judicial nominations.
That's a fact, not a guess.
She should have left, but the reason she didn't should be happening either.
Yeah this is just an unfortunate reality of the situation we're living in today. People think she was on some sort of ego trip by remaining in the senate or something, when really it was just the best option for making sure Biden is able to appoint judges. She was able to get a bunch of them approved recently, we should be thankful for that. People saying stuff like "thank God she's finally gone" are so ignorant. Newsom will appoint a democrat, that democrat will get no meaningful committee appointments, and we'll be in a worse situation than we were.
To avoid the whole "walking dead" thing that keeps happening to elderly politicians. I think it is self-evidently bad when the people running the country cannot remember what happened yesterday.
Apparently you are in the minority. Her constituents had no problem voting for her in the last election despite her advanced age. They either don't care or value experience over other concerns.
Yeah. Both "she's too old to run" and "she's the best candidate under our current system" can be true at the same time. Elsewhere in this thread, I proposed changing the system to have an upper age limit (65) on running for office, which nicely solves the problem, as someone else would have had to step up before her brain turned into pea soup.
She was also incredibly right wing vs. her constituents and was extremely bought off. She did some civil rights stuff early in her career, but it’s been 100% corruption and destroying the environment for this entire century.
She wasn’t senile that entire time.
(I’ll quantify right wing: She voted with the Trump administration more than any other democrat, and voted like an average republican senator during his administration.)
> (I’ll quantify right wing: She voted with the Trump administration more than any other democrat, and voted like an average republican senator during his administration.)
That's nonsense. She voted like every other cookie cutter corporate Democrat, i.e. whatever her handlers told her to do. At the tail end of her career, it was pretty explicit (and disgusting to watch): https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/sen-dianne-feinste...
I've been really surprised by the conversation around this being centered around age when, in my opinion, the controversy should be about a group of staffers exercising the power of a Senator with the tacit backing of the party. There is video/audio of staffers actively teller her what to say and how to vote. The office appears to have usurped her power. Voters aren't being represented by the person they elected.
Her staff could just finish out her term and nothing would change but that's illegal because she's dead.
She was basically trapped in the job when the Senate refused to appoint Obama's pick to fill the vacant seat of Scalia. If she had retired it would have just been two empty seats for Trump to fill quicker. People were actively asking her to stay in the job.
Feinstein was a democratic senator in a democratic state with a democratic governor. She was actively being told she was unfit. She should have just retired.
There were people quietly pressuring RBG to retire back in 2013, when the Democrats had a fragile majority in the senate and knew they might not get another chance to keep that seat.
You understand that there were years before 2016, right? In some of them, Democrats outnumbered Republicans in Congress.
I still remember the plethora of articles about RBG's supercool workout regimen dating back to the early 2010s because she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2009. The fixation on her health was largely because everyone knew this woman was getting ready to kick the bucket at some point, but she refused to make her exit before the Republicans took control over Congress.
Just some examples of what I'm talking about as evidence:
This is true, but the same time, she was 79 in 2012, which was also the AVERAGE life expectancy at the time. And you would think the wealthy well connected 'important' members of society have a noticeably longer life expectancy.
This, in turn is a rewrite of history. There was a call for her to resign well before the end of Obama’s second term. In fact, it was a hot topic leading up to the 2014 midterms, since Obama had the Senate votes at that time to nominate whoever he wanted.
If I understand correctly, court tradition is that only a Supreme Court justice can suggest to another that it is time for them to retire.
Obama may well have been right. But the suggestion should have come from one of the other liberals on the court. (And it may well have, for all we know. But we wouldn't hear about it one way or the other.)
I wonder if the Justices themselves have accepted that they hold a de-facto partisan position and should act as such. I mean, the system clearly was not designed like it was one.
The hardest thing to do in a position of power is to take a bow gracefully and step off the stage. Part of what made George Washington so great and groundbreaking in those days.
This is true, but they are also re-elected at a rate of ~80% with no term limits on re-election (2022 saw a 100% re-election rate for Senators despite congress having a 75% disapproval rating at the time).
No term limits, but they have to be re-elected every 6 years. She kept voting the way the majority of the people in her state wanted to, so she kept getting re-elected (presumably).
I'm not. But do you think they'd still have that incumbent advantage if they consistently voted against their party's interests (I should also clarify that with "and were honest about it, not lying through their teeth and claiming otherwise").
And even then, they wouldn't keep getting major donor funding if they weren't voting in those people's interests, incumbent or no.
There have been a few cases of incumbents changing party (ignoring the "I'm totally independent guys even though I caucus with one party incredibly reliably" ones) to follow their voters.
In general "I'll only ever vote X party" is the same as "I don't care who at all".
SF has 2% of the population of California and senate is a statewide election. The real problem for the democratic organization in California is that Feinstein cruised to reelection because the only challenger was Kevin De León, a career criminal. The state party needs to examine why it doesn't have a bench of credible candidates.
To be fair, Senator Feinstein was married to a guy who ran his own equity capital investment management firm so it's not like we can assume her personal wealth is all derived from investing her salary.
As someone who is just engineer / architect and has to have all my trades approved and accounts granted access to reporting for not only my self but my partner. it really annoys me that these folks are not under more scrutiny. I don’t even have really any information to what these government officials do.
This to me falls under the “rules for thee not me.”
If you work in engineering at a bank, all your personal account trades probably have to be pre-approved by your supervisor. You're almost certainly restricted on the products you can trade - like, maybe even "you cannot trade single stocks". You probably have to keep your account with an approved broker, who will then send your account statements to the compliance team at your firm.
If you try and trade a name that's on a restricted trading list (e.g. because the investment banking part of your firm is working on a deal with them) then that is also going to be denied.
If you're wall-crossed (e.g. in possession of material, non-public information, even by accident) for a deal, you absolutely cannot trade in related securities - like, go to jail, do not pass go.
Has that ever actually happened? Who is worth millions (at a rate faster than index fund) who isn’t married to a wealthy spouse or have wealthy inheritance or have lucrative book deals etc?
Dubious congress trades aside, congresspeople should not die of old age serving. There is something wrong with people like Byrd and Feinstein dying while serving.
Even without term limits they should have the decency to know when to call it quits and not become a figurehead where most of the work they’re entrusted with is done behind the scenes by others —none of this bullshit whispering in their ear on how to vote.
At least have them have to pass significant cognitive tests by a panel of competent professionals who are voted in by both parties (or as many parties as have greater than 5% rep).
Weekend at Bernie's should remain a farce and not become reality.
"Professionals" arbitrarily deciding whose psychological functions are passable in order to allow an elected person to take office sounds horrendous to me, impartial panel or not.
If there's anything 2020-2021 and the 4th branch of the gov't taught me, it's that we need to quit putting authority figures in positions of power over the people, for the sole reason of being an authority figure.
Why? I don’t want people with decreased mental abilities serving in important gov positions. Do public companies let aging incompetent leaders stay on as senior executives?
I'm not asking for stringent qualifications. Bare minimum. Have time awareness, place awareness, be aware of the connection between action and consequences, have control over bodily functions. I'm not asking for a Chess champion or math wiz.
The point is that there is no good system that would allow a committee to decide if a politician is fit for office or not.
Just look how Trump tried to destroy the electoral system for his own gain before and on January 6th. Now apply his tactics to to a "committee" to decide if a democrat can seek reelection.
There is a good system to decide if the CEO is fit or not, it's the board of director. Those are entirely different systems.
Publicly advocating for a policy change is also part of how democracies work. The "just vote" response as a mode of "don't talk about policy ideas" is silly for this reason; _how_ we vote is informed by our conversations with others, and what policies we put on the table is informed by what we all want and prioritize.
But I think this can't realistically be just an issue of voting or not voting for individual elderly senate candidates, for a couple reasons:
- a 6 year term is a long time, and a lot can change during that period
- tenure in the Senate comes with placement on important committees; if your state wants their legislators in positions of power, you're pressured to allow them to accrue more tenure _so long as legislatures from other states are allowed to do the same_. Institutional-level limits on age or fitness must apply across the board.
- X is too old to serve is literally an ad-hominem attack in any given race and individuals competing for office choose not to use it because making that argument comes with real costs. We _should_ try to keep discourse in these races about policy issues. But retirement ages or fitness standards as an across-the-board policy proposal is an appropriate way to safeguard offices without descending into a personal attack about a person's un-chosen attributes.
I also don't want people with decreased mental abilities representing me in government, so I don't vote for them to be elected to those positions. The people of California elected Senator Feinstein for years, so they get what they voted for.
Edit: I don't disagree with you in theory, but I don't think the system you propose is practicable.
We should seriously consider mandatory retirement ages for all high public offices. We have them in the Foreign Service, and of course it would be bad for a diplomat to be in mental decline while negotiating a complex treaty. Multiple states have retirement ages for judges. The work of a senator or federal judge should be similarly protected from disruption due to the predictable age-related decline of individual office holders.
The fact that we can even have a discussion around this indicates a fundamental problem with mass-market voting, it's just a popularity contest with certain rules.
It's probably likely that nobody voted for her in the last 20 years, instead voting for the party she represents. And they're probably roughly satisfied with the results, which means she provided little that an AI couldn't have done (a very simple one, something like VOTE=D).
This is likely true of almost all representatives. It's likely hard to find one that you can't simply predict how they will act.
I think whether and when during a senatorial term senility starts to set, or accelerates in is also pretty arbitrary.
Picking one number, based on input from experts in psychology and medicine, and applying it to all high-level public trust jobs, and putting it in law in our normal democratic processes would be no more arbitrary than the rule that the President must be at least 35.
I will point out that civilians who want "public trust" positions within the federal government or even as contractors are checked for a range of attributes which may make them potentially unfit for the responsibilities in question. Currently, my understanding is that subsequent to a clearance check, they must sign an agreement to not use substances like marijuana for the duration of their employment. This policy is _also_ not something that Americans voted for. I would argue that Feinstein, who often seemed not to know where she was, or McConnell, who is sometimes unaware that he was making remarks, are far more impaired than someone who occasionally enjoys an edible.
The way the voting and political systems work create a huge advantage for the incumbent, particularly in a state like California where there's a huge Democratic majority. Primaries usually work on a plurality system, so even if the voters don't like the incumbent due to age, they have to all agree on the replacement, or the incumbent will win with less than 50%. Primaries also don't have a very high turnout rate, and so the incumbent can magnify their advantage in fundraising, political connections, etc. This goes double for a very old Senator that has had a long time to build up that political capital.
There are also political costs to opposing the incumbent from within the same party. Running a competitive race will be seen as disloyal by many people in the party. It's much less risky to just wait out the incumbent and then run.
For similar reasons, it's really suboptimal for the governor to be choosing Feinstein's interim replacement. Effectively one person will get to choose California's senator for the next 20-30 years.
it's incredible isn't it? Even beyond cognitive inabilities, average age is like 64 and the median net worth of congress is $1M (probably much higher for senate given cost of campaign). Compare that to 62% of American's reportedly living paycheck to paycheck.
One of our serious cultural flaws is powerful individuals don't divest their power, and the system doesn't force them too. A prerequisite to becoming rich or attaining political power is a desire to have it. And those people never in their life reduce their scope.
I know the easy approach here is for people to want an age limit in Congress, but I've always been more partial to a term limit.
I'm sure there are plenty of hypotheses as to why this happens, but whatever the cause elected officials seem to have an extremely easy go of getting re-elected these days. The increasing average age in Congress is just a side effect of that in my opinion.
Agreed. There may be some older people that are still totally capable. Not everyone's cognitive functions crumble at the same time, to the same degree, or even in the same way. Age limits are a bad solution.
My problem with term limits is being a politician is a job like any other. You get a performance review every few years. But by the time you get really good at the job you're forced to quit.
If there are age minimums for these federal offices there should be age maximums.
I think being too “good at the job” is part of what people are worried about for politicians.
Yes there are skills to be learned to be effective in such a system, but being too entrenched in it can lead to forming relationships that overshadow the relationship with their constituents.
Term limits definitely come with very real tradeoffs. I'd argue, though, that if the machine is that corrupt it doesn't matter what we do with politicians.
What you're describing sounds to me like the politicians are inconsequential puppets and the machine must be limited or removed. I could a tuallg get behind that idea, it wouldn't take much to convince me that term limits don't go after the real problem.
Maybe we should consider a less violent version of what Thomas Jefferson wanted and just replace the entire government, top to bottom, every 20 years. On top of any other term limits or whatever - just periodically reset everything for the current generation.
Maybe that would even include a Constitutional convention. I've long been of the opinion that we should be updating the Constitution more often, and more easily. It isn't intended to be frozen in amber.
I'm definitely a fan of the general sentiment. Exactly how that is done to keep enough stability to avoid constant churn would be a really interesting debate, but I've long thought that laws should be required to come with expiration dates that have to be renewed.
Personally, I'd also be so interested to see what the political response would be today if a group of well known and respected individuals scheduled a constitutional convention to honestly hold such discussions. It's exactly what we did to being the process of breaking away from the king, I wonder if they would get shut down somehow?
I'd argue that gridlock is a feature not a bug. Hamilton even said as much in the Federalist papers when acknowledging that the model of a three-branch government can be slow and inefficient compared to a one or two branch model.
I think this gets a bit further down the road than my original goal of a quick solution that could be implemented now for some benefit, but yeah I'd love to see power pushed as far down the hierarchy as possible.
I'm not totally opposed to max age limits, that has tradeoffs just like term limits would.
Theres no magic bullet unfortunately. Any line in the sand will have people caught in the crossfire, whether that's a person over the age limit that would make an excellent representative or a person who is blocked from a third term that actually isn't corrupted by the machine of political favor, lobbyists, etc.
I don't think it's fair to assume that votes are representative of performance. Politics are a popularity contest first and unfortunately that means image is more important than actions.
I'd say term limits are an unfortunate tradeoff that might be helpful when votes and performance diverge too far.
If the machine itself is broken, any changes or limitations to the output (the politicians here) are just bandaids. I do actually think we should fix the underlying problem, but hopefully term limits could buy us some time and start to remove power from those who gained so much by the system that needs fixing.
1- One six-year term on the presidency. Enough time to get stuff done and see the results, but then you're out. The current structure gives the American public 1-2 years of productivity, then they go into campaign mode on the tax payers dime.
2- All official party nominees get the exact same budget for campaigning. Creates a level playing field and neutralizes the power of lobbying
3- Congressman, Senators, Governors are limited to a single 6 year term. This will create a lot of churn, require voters to get engaged to understand the candidates better, and eliminate lifetime politicians who will inevitably be corrupted (I'm a cynic).
Need to ponder how to hedge the power of the people behind the scenes who support the office since they are unelected and undoubtedly powerful (I'm thinking about the people writing Biden's scripts, who are they, who elected them, what do they believ, etc.... we know he isn't doing it).
I guarantee that "require voters to get engaged to understand the candidates better" is the exact opposite of what would happen. Voters ain't got time for that shit, they'd more strongly become single-party lever-pullers.
I'd throw in restructuring the Supreme Court. Lifetime appointments seem to have devolved into them being wildly politically swingy based on when very-old people decide to retire (or die), with a strong incentive to then install the youngest doctrinaire ideologues you can get through the Senate. (And to engage in political brinksmanship to push an appointment back a few months to give it to the other party if you can, etc.)
Give them a fixed number of years and have new ones appointed on a schedule that's synced to presidential terms.
Term limits are just a mechanism to transfer power to un-elected officials and lobbyists, and to make sure any decent politicians are kicked out before they can have any lasting impact.
Imagine working at a job where there were rules that forced your company to lay off all the most experienced folks after a few years.
Term limits should for the presidency should probably have been left as a "gentleman's agreement" and not codified in an amendment just because politicians were pissed at the people continually electing Roosevelt.
I'm not familiar enough with the motivations behind that specific amendment. I could see it having been an increased concern over people being okay with ignoring the gentleman's agreement, but a political tit for tat with Roosevelt would also track.
Presidency is a special case as it is a singular role that holds enormous amounts of power. And former presidents still have the ability to transition back into Congress afterwards and affect change at that level.
Should the Presidency be a special case? The President isn't supposed to be "leader of the government," just an administrator of one of three co-equal branches led by the people.
The president shouldn't be any more popular or powerful than a Senator or representative in Congress, arguably they should be less so because Congress writes the laws and controls the budget. But the way American politics works, driven by populism and celebrity worship, you'd think the President controls the entire government like the CEO of a company.
Remove their power to pardon and issue executive orders - a President shouldn't have the authority to overrule the judicial or legislative branches. Give them a single. six year term. Make it illegal for them to hold any further government position, then boot them out. The Presidency should be nothing more than a revolving door of nobody bureaucrats, like a Prime Minister.
Also, they shouldn't get Secret Service protection for life. They can have the same Second Amendment protections as other citizens after office, which are supposed to be perfectly sufficient. Or let them hire private security.
Unless you are saying we need to abolish the position entirely and just rely on the legislative and judicial branches of the government on their own.
But until that happens the presidency is a very specific position that only one person holds. But at the end of the day, Congress as a whole holds more power, so term limits in Congress I would consider much more impactful (in a bad way) than term limits on the presidency.
>Unless you are saying we need to abolish the position entirely and just rely on the legislative and judicial branches of the government on their own.
I'm not saying that, although I do find the idea appealing. Mostly I'm saying the position of President has been elevated in the ideals of American politics far out of proportion that what it should be, and the position itself has all of these weird Neo-monarchical backdoors to give the Presidency some degree of carte blanche power over the other branches, just because the founding fathers didn't trust the other branches to be capable of doing their jobs.
American Presidential elections have become national events to rival the Superbowl, but few Americans care nearly as much about judges, or Senators or Congress, much less local government. By default, most will write off the entirety of government as a fully corrupt, perfectly incompetent sewer, not worth engaging with, believing in or thinking about beyond spite. Only the President is seen to have true agency, can be justified as representing the people, and has the power to enable actual change, almost through sheer force of will alone. At least if they're from your party.
I just think the balance is entirely out of whack but I'm not certain whether that's a symptom of merely politics or a flaw in the system itself.
> Remove their power to pardon and issue executive orders
Oh add both of those to the list of things I wish we could remove! Pardon are often used as little more than political capital, and executive orders reek of executive overreach and an abuse of power.
I don't see a need for term limits- as long as they keep being popular and able to do the job, they should do it.
I see a need for impartial testing of "able to do the job", such as "can count backwards from 20 without falling asleep or missing any numbers or going briefly catatonic".
My main concern without term limits is when an elected official moves from being popular and effective at their job to being effective at getting reelected. Those are very different skills, with the latter risking politicians that are only reelected because of the power, favors, and connections they have collected.
Term limits definitely aren't a magic fix, I just see the tradeoffs as worth it relative to my personal concerns.
My main concern without term limits is when an elected official moves from being popular and effective at their job to being effective at getting reelected.
How does forcing new candidates every number of years ensure that elected officials will be "popular and effective at their job"?
It doesn't. You aren't the only one here that raised similar question, I should have clarified that in my original post.
I don't actually like governments creating regulations and drawing lines in the sand. As many have raised with term limits, it isn't a perfect answer and at best bandaids the real problem rather than fixing it.
I'd argue that's the case with any regulation emposed on large populations, there are just too many complexities at that scale to draw a clean line. With term limits specifically, I see it as an unfortunate but possibly necessary tradeoff that may at least give us a chance to start fixing the real problem. We both need more time to find the right answer, and we need to remove those who collected so much power and control from the same system that needs to be fixed in the first place.
Term limits would also remove anyone with any potential to collect enough power to change the system.
And there is nothing that prevents the replacements from abusing the power and control afforded to them in similar or worse ways. They'll be kicked out regardless of what they do, so why care about the long term?
Effectiveness of term limits would depend a good deal on how the power and control is gained in the first place. I'm of the opinion that much of it is from personal connections, favors, and dirt that can be used as leverage. None of that would easily transfer to the next official.
If power is largely collected by the office itself, or the party behind the talking head, then I agree replacing them more often may not help much.
Instead of term limits, I’d much rather they be paid a 99% percentile wage until death, but be banned from accepting any other income or gifts, investing in stocks or owning any sort of business or investment property (again, for life).
It might be better to lower the income to 90th or 50th percentile, so only people that actually wanted the job
would take it.
Ideally, the restrictions would extend to the kids. It would definitely extend to the spouses.
Also, all no campaign donations over $50. Finally, all campaign communications must be publicly archived in realtime, and no more political ads. (The latter is because some politicians now tell different, personalized lies to each constituent, thanks to the internet).
Another possibility is to let anyone volunteer for congress, then pick the winner at random from the pool each term. This worked amazingly well for local positions in some country that tried it. (Government efficiency immediately doubled or something.)
Oh I'm all for anything that can be done to prevent politicians from getting rich through insider trading, "gifts", favors, and happening into fortunes just after leaving office.
I see that as a different problem to solve, but yeah if the solution to one can supercede the other I'd get behind that.
> Ideally, the restrictions would extend to the kids. It would definitely extend to the spouses.
I actually really hate this idea whenever it comes up, at least for the kids. It feels rather oppressive that you could have your largely-estranged parent decide to get into politics, and have that entirely derail your life.
The current system gives us a bunch of grifters like the Trump kids or Hunter Biden, to be sure, but I'd rather directly punish the parent who's being corrupt than their children who don't even hold office.
Salary proposals always run into one issue though: independently wealthy individuals have a massive advantage. Even if you limit their personal contributions to their campaign, it's difficult to impossible to prevent a wealthy person from making themselves much more well known in a campaign race.
A wealthy person is also totally fine with whatever the salary is, because they already have a bunch of money.
I know the easy approach here is for people to want an age limit in Congress, but I've always been more partial to a term limit.
I'm sure there are plenty of hypotheses as to why this happens, but whatever the cause elected officials seem to have an extremely easy go of getting re-elected these days. The increasing average age in Congress is just a side effect of that in my opinion.
The problem with term limits is that they don't apply to lobbyists. Lobbyists basically writing most of the legislation is already a major problem, and it becomes worse when all the representatives are new to the office.
This is somewhat the difficulty of balancing the needs of governments. A short term/term limit leads to more inexperienced people doing the job. That's good in some ways - keeping new ideas coming in or keeping people from doing the job far too long. On the other hand, it means some large portion of the legislature is people who are more or less still learning. The process of writing good law that avoids unnecessary downsides, or simply understands the downsides and works to mitigate them isn't something you can just pick up over a weekend, especially when there aren't many people to learn it from.
As you say, it's easy to point to the folks who have been in office forever as being an issue, but there's also staff and lobbyists and other unelected roles that are hard to get rid of the influence of. At the end of the day, someone needs to be the expert, either on the vast array of issues that can come up in national government, or in how to actually do something about those issues.
Wouldn't term limits atleast slightly mitigate this issue? Harder to be buddy buddy with the person in power of they keep changing every other term or two. But you are right about the influence of lobbyists. It's very messed up when an unknown unelected person can write parts of a law as is and get away with it
One really interesting question there, how much of the work is really don't by the elected official?
If a lot of the "real" work is done by the staffers, career government workers, etc then the politician really is the public face and occasionally redirecting the ship. I'd say there is less risk there and more to gain from fresh faces and opinions in that spot, again if that's how the workload shakes out behind the scenes
Lobbyists are just part of it. The revolving door means politicians can become lobbyists when they hit their term limit and lobbyists can become politicians where there is an opening.
Amakudari is what Japan has, the so called descent from heaven. They fixed the revolving door by making it go one way. Government officials retire to lucrative corporate jobs in their retirement, but they can never get back in to Heaven
Having seen Diane bootlick for the telecoms most of my life, good riddance.
Yes, you heard me. I am not even going to pause for a condolance or bite my tongue. I'm glad she's gone. She was 100% unfit for the position in the last few years of her life and nothing was done about it. This is a problem with US Politics, they are too fucking old to represent the actual population so they are pulled by SIGs and lobbyists. We are not accurately represented.
We need term limits in the Senate. She was part of the problem, and the problem needs to be fixed.
I strongly disagree with her politics, and also believe that she should have retired earlier.
A mentor of mine used to remind me, "always react with class". I fail at this a lot, but try.
I think it would be good for you to try too.
And also to remember that she was fairly elected. She was who the people wanted. If you want to be angry, be angry at the people who continued to elect her.
Maybe not so much vitrol directed at her on a day of tragedy.
She's now literally the only person who cannot be affected by vitriol.
Nevertheless attempts to pin the blame on her for things her constituency was obviously happy or oblivious to is misguided.
Term limits give more power to the lobbyists and other back-room powers, because they are never term limited, and they quickly learn how to be exceptionally persuasive to newbie representatives.
At least a non-limited representative has the chance to learn to resist, thought it's pretty darn rare. Term limits would snuff that out entirely.
Term or age limits don't fix corporate and media capture. It doesn't matter who gets her seat, they are still going to vote party line and so will you.
sure but the senate doesn't just legislate for registered voters. my point is how out of touch congress potentially is based on age (and from other comments, net worth).
I know it’s rude to say negative things about a person who has just passed, but I can’t help feeling happy that such an influential Senate seat will finally go to someone that’s not over 70 (hopefully).
There should be age limits for public office and it should match whatever we consider the retirement age to be. We have too many dusty old codgers running things and ruining things, clawing at power and money while destroying civilization for their great grandchildren (which is all the worse, because they’ve met them).
When I see someone like Feinstein elected repeatedly, it’s blatant evidence of how broken politics is in America. In California, apparently, policy positions, personal character, and corruption don’t matter, you can elect a corpse in a wheelchair if it has a D next to its name, and they did.
Adding an age limit would just get you a slightly younger equivalent in that seat (wheelchair?).
At least now you have the (minuscule, I admit) chance that some secure senator will go against his or her party because they know their seat is secure in re-election.
Many of the policy positions held by Congresspersons I believe to be directly tied to their age and place in life and their lack of understanding around technology, all of which are best rectified by reducing the median age of those serving in Congress. While this does nothing to affect special interest groups, lobbying, or corruption, those are separate issues with separate solutions. Age limits are not a panacea, but they are necessary.
It is nothing shy of disgusting that someone clearly incapable of serving the role of senator dragged her constituents and the country through this till death. Shame on her, her family, and her staff.
> Since 1789, 301 [ed: 302] Senators have died in office. When a
sitting Member dies, the Senate and House of
Representatives carry out a number of actions based in part on chamber rules, statutes, long-standing practices, and other variables extant at the time of the Senator’s demise.
"Colleagues, critics and an increasingly restive field of aspiring successors have questioned her health and fitness for office — a concern, her supporters noted, that few have raised for male octogenarians in the Senate — but friends said she made her decision on her own timetable."
Proof is in the pudding, eh? But more seriously, plenty have criticized McConnell for his public health lapses, and the two of them together kicked off a lot of bipartisan (citizen) grumbling about old politicians. Then of course our main presidential candidates...
The kerfuffle about sexism when criticizing Feinstein is hogwash.
I don't know her full legacy, and I recall her being a good thorn in the side of Bush when he needed one. Sad it took this event to get a replacement.
And Newsom promised to put in a black woman, but also promised not to put in someone actually running for Senate. I wonder if the relevant groups of citizens care about that declaration.
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 543 ms ] threadThat said, I wouldn't expect it to prevent a pretty quick replacement if Senate business demands it, so it likely won't be a significant impact from a political or operational perspective.
Is that something he has actually said?
> “Yes. Interim appointment. I don’t want to get involved in the primary,” Newsom said. “It would be completely unfair to the Democrats that have worked their tail off. That primary is just a matter of months away. I don’t want to tip the balance of that.”
This means judicial nominations are effectively hamstrung for the time being.
Like yes there are a lot of self-imposed rules in the Senaate, but it's fundamentally on the Democrats that they can't pull together 51 votes to tweak the rules.
Doesn't change that they won't do anything, of course. :|
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/05/03/how-do-st...
Cute quip. Do you apply that sentiment towards the Biden family as well?
But, her death leaves her committee seats open. Filling those seats will take time and where she was in a leadership position, that needs resolved. Committees often have a 1-vote edge to the majority party, so those committees may be effectively deadlocked until replacements are nominated/approved (this is almost exclusively a Senate task - so can the Democratic leadership in the Senate get new members into committees in a timely manner).
Edit - typos
That was in the case of a retirement. This is a death and reappointment. I am unsure if the new Senator would assume Sen Feinstein's previous committee assignments, but all of my instincts around the Senate say no. So we are back in the position of relying on the GOP to allow the new Senator to fully serve and represent the 39 million citizens of California. If you know anything about the modern GOP and their despise for democracy, you know they will never let that happen.
Sorry, California, the 39 million of you only get 1.3 senators for the next 15 months. The 576 thousand people of Wyoming will still get their full 2.
Caveat - I'm not American and have never taken a US history class. This is just something I heard on a podcast.
Also, the intended function of the Senate was to oversee process and senators were selected by state legislators. They are not supposed to originate legislation. But it got a bit twisted up since then.
California can appoint an interim Senator (per their constitutional & laws - I believe the governor does it without any approval from other parties).
Committee appointment is by Senate rules. There's no automatic right to a seat on a committee. Judiciary is a massively important committee because it oversees the approval of federal judges (without committee approval, the nominees never get to the floor for a vote).
The GOP can block a committee replacement via filibuster. The Democrats could attempt a rules package to prevent filibuster, but Manchin (D-WV) has historically been against those.
No they get two. Just as Wyoming, which is how the country has always worked and is the only reason the country exists in the first place. I’ve no idea where you pulled “1.3” from but this has always been and remains such an insufferable talking point from left leaning people, the United States is just that, a republican union of states, larger states specifically should not be able to impose their rule on smaller states.
The purpose of a senator is to represent the state, not the people. That's why in the US Constitution it says that senators will be elected by state legislators (later changed by the 17th amendment to be elected by the people).
Representatives represent the people. That's why the number of representatives is proportional to the population of the state, and the senators are proportional to the states (there's approx. 1 state per state).
Details:
> Four U.S. senators, including three Democrats, as well as three former Feinstein staffers and the California Democratic member of Congress told The Chronicle in recent interviews that her memory is rapidly deteriorating. They said it appears she can no longer fulfill her job duties without her staff doing much of the work required to represent the nearly 40 million people of California.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/dianne-feinstei...
With our aging population, we need to figure out how to be inclusive of those who can contribute, while identifying those who can not. Hard age limits are likely becoming less desirable as the population ages - retirement at 55 will seem like a joke. But that doesn't mean we should just accept people who are not with it in various positions of power.
Could be a bit more true of Biden, I don't know, but I doubt it's significantly more than other high profile figures or other presidents.
Due to practicality and congressional gridlock, this has to happen state by state, and in many states the 'easiest' method is some sort of ballot initiative. I encourage anyone who reads this to look up the process in their state (https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_ballot_measures_by_state) and at least try to get a signature out to one so they show up on the ballot.
California runs an open primary and a top two general.
I'm not especially in favor of short term limits, since there is a benefit to politicians with experience. But I'd definitely consider options that better balance their reasonable desire to elect experienced and influential candidates with the very heavy hand that experience puts on everybody else.
Heck, California has gone so far as to have all their senate elections be between two members of the same party.
Most other votes will be largely sublimated to the party priorities. The individuals will determine the specific contents of what they're voting on, but in general the person from the other party is going to vote against the things you're most interested in. You may watch your party vote on things that aren't your favorite, but it's unlikely they'll be repugnant to you. That's how they got to be your allies.
If you want to get more involved than that, you show up for the primaries. That's a multi-way contest to find the person who best represents you and your allies. That's where the party priorities get set. People who vote only in the general election are missing out on the real work of politics.
At the end of the day, the people continue to elect them. If voters were unhappy with Feinstein's performance (or that of her key aides), the solution was as simple as voting her out.
Name recognition is powerful.
Seniority leads to leadership of key committees in the US Congress.
But, I do agree that this is a problem. RBG was another example - had she retired a few years prior to her death, the state of SCOTUS would be very different today. Was she addicted to the power? Did she truly think nobody younger could do a better job? Same for Feinstein, McConnell, Biden, and many others on both sides of the aisle.
Often these incompetent people are in "safe seat" regions. Either heavily democrat or republican. Voters won't switch parties just because representative is incompetent. There should be another options.
In her last election, both final candidates were Democrats. Neither party could unseat her. Voters have been clear that they preferred Feinstein to anybody else.
So the question is why? Was it her power in the Senate? Was she particularly good at bringing pork to CA? Or was it just money and the political machine? Probably a lot of that last item - the parties themselves have incentives to keep winning politicians around - they're good for fund-raising.
The only people losing power with her early retirement would have been her handlers. She hasn’t made a decision on her own in a long time. And when she did pretend to do so, the handlers would “help her remember the right choice”.
Life or death. The mindset is that when they retire they have nothing to live for and will die soon after. The personality type required to get to a powerful position like Senator can also (frequently * ) not be able to conceive of a meaningful life after office. Quitting office is like giving up on life for these people.
*Jimmy Carter is a good counter example. He found a meaningful purpose after holding a powerful office.
Perhaps the "reason to live" is more important than people realize.
California and senate elections are slightly better in that regard, however, look at how much money Feinstein was able to raise over her opponents. This is nothing special about Feinstein, it's an advantage incumbents generally enjoy:
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/dianne-feins...
I think getting this money out of politics is a start to ensuring elections are based on the candidate themselves & their policies and less around how much special interests already have invested in them. I don't have any ideas about how to get more people to show up specifically for primary elections, but the ideas people have around getting more people to vote in general elections could help, like expanding absentee voting, making it a holiday, etc.
> The U.S. electorate is aging: 52% of registered voters are ages 50 and older, up from 41% in 1996. This shift has occurred in both partisan coalitions. More than half of Republican and GOP-leaning voters (56%) are ages 50 and older, up from 39% in 1996. And among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, half are 50 and older, up from 41% in 1996.
> Another way to consider the aging of the electorate is to look at median age. The median age among all registered voters increased from 44 in 1996 to 50 in 2019. It rose from 43 to 52 among Republican registered voters and from 45 to 49 among Democratic registered voters.
I think that on average, people consider age significant, so they expect their candidate to be around as old as them. I don't think it's the whole picture, but it helps me feel less baffled at least.
Their underlings support them because they lose access to a great influencer in case of removal.
It's more difficult for young people to rise up when there's very little influence to be had. However, in times of great upheaval young people tend to rise up much faster as the incompetent people at the top get removed.
This is their life. It is literally the only thing they have ever one in one form or another.
For many of us this would be like never touching a computer again after turning 65.
[1] This article is from six years ago. https://www3.bostonglobe.com/news/science/2017/10/11/congres...
In the military, you're always training a replacement, and come 65 (or 68), you're retiring, regardless of your capacity.
That is: Why do we exclude people under 18 from voting? Because we think they don't have the mental tools to understand policy well enough to make an informed decision. Well, if seniors don't have the mental tools anymore, should they be allowed to vote?
And this is even stronger with holding office. You can vote at 18, but you can't be a representative until 25, or a senator until 35. Why? Because you need to be old enough to (hopefully) have some judgment. Well, what if you're too old to have judgment?
So, yeah, excluding seniors from office would in fact be reasonable. Or at least requiring an annual mental competency test.
Unfortunately, we'll never get it without a state-driven constitutional convention, because those with the most power in Congress are highly correlated with those with the highest age.
Not every 15 year old would make an unsatisfactory legislator, and yet ...
And then we see under-18 routinely be charged as adults.
And yes, if 15 year olds could vote and run for office, I do think we'd see more issues aimed at the younger generations ALONG WITH longer views of how our government is run. And we're seeing the judicial side of this with youngsters suing for climate devastation, like https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/08/1...
There is truth to the idea that, whether due to life experience or brain development, teenagers struggle with proper decision-making.
I don't like the arbitrary nature of age cutoffs, but I would no longer support the idea of giving more political power to anyone under 18.
I don't like the arbitrary nature of age cutoffs, but I would no longer support the idea of giving more political power to anyone under 18.
while that's just an anecdote, even if it were the norm, it is also the norm for old people of a sufficient age
if it makes you feel better, we can administer cognitive tests to old people and determine at what point they fall into "teenager" level of mental acuity
I had a friend who remained sharp until her mid 90s. I have family members who shouldn't be voting in their early 70s. That range is massive, whereas we can mostly agree that nearly all 14 year olds aren't capable, but most 20 year olds are - unfair but not as vast a range.
I'm not sure that's true. Mental maturity in kids varies widely, too. There are some pretty mentally mature kids changing the world. Look at Greta Thunberg.
There are also many fewer years for older people to live with the consequences of their votes. Everything has trade-offs. In this case, the loss would not be as bad as the loss we get from excluding those below 18.
Whatever the counterexample of sharp old people, I can think of one for sharp young people. We ignore those exceptions for young people, we can ignore them for old people, too. And if you're worried the old-age cutoff will be too young, just pick whatever age's median mental acuity matches 18 year olds - what's good for the gosling is good for the goose.
If you get ages can be seen to have the same legal cognitive patters as an adult, why shouldn't they also have the same rights as an adult?
There's no way to separate the able minded from the seniles fairly, so an age limit is the best way to do it.
Sorry about your father, but there are plenty of 70 year olds who are extremely competent, capable and that also bring valuable connections and experience.
And if you've been around many elderly people, you know that quite a few are less competent to vote than the average 14-year-old student council member, and that letting ~all of them do so is no less arbitrary than that "18".
The minimum ages necessarily put an upward skew on it, but very few are anywhere near the minimum. There is little need to ensure representation for the elderly. And meantime, anybody of working age is badly under-represented.
An age limit would be a crude form of that. So would a term limit.
We could alter the seniority system that gives much more weight to people who have been there the longest. But that's a rule Congress passes for itself, and it's hard to imagine many incumbents giving up on a privilege they've been waiting for.
is: "McConnell’s frozen moment renews questions about America’s aged leaders" https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/31/politics/mitch-mcconnell-...
this is an interview he gave within the last week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qldqgtCYMs0
This would seem to be less democratic rather than more. The voters have less options than before, so the shift in power is from voters to experts.
So at least age limits are something everyone can prepare for and expect, rather than it being a surprise?
No. Psychiatry, like politics and law, depends much on the personal beliefs of the human in charge. Look at our supreme court. Justices are supposed to be impartial, but they still tend to decide cases based on their political leanings.
That's a feature, not a bug, of being human.
Do we really want political games around deciding who is fit or unfit for office? I can 100% guarantee that this will cause more shit-slinging from both sides at each other than meaningful action
Or, test them for physicals and minds before they can take on the job, do it annually, it's a normal practice in all other fields, it's good for all sides.
I've seen this happen in the real world in Italy.
(Yes, there are primaries, but the DNC and RNC hold an astronomical amount of power in picking the candidates and influencing the winners.)
Or, if the Senate is really meant to represent the states rather than the people, it should only be concerned with state issues: which issues belong at the federal level, and which at the state level, for example.
Can't be much worse and statistically it should have basically the same outcome.
Some examples:
- Congressional elections are expensive; incumbents have deeper-rooted donor networks to tap.
- Civic groups that are already working with the incumbent want to continue the relationship.
- General voter apathy around primary elections; even regular voters often skip primaries so finding people who will actually vote gets harder.
- Name recognition; if someone shows up to the polls to vote for another ballot item but hasn't followed the congressional race, they'll probably put a box next to the incumbent unless they have a particular reason not to.
I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing -- high turnover of elected officials is disruptive to the system -- but there are clearly cases in which it overcorrects.
This becomes even worse when combined with "safe" districts where whoever wins the primary for the district's ruling party is nearly guaranteed to win the general election as well. It makes one wonder how democratic we should consider such an election to be.
All this is to say that it's important to not just look at whether an institution is democratic in form, but whether it is also democratic in outcomes. The Law of Unintended Consequences will be obeyed.
[https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/UnintendedConsequences.h...]
Then again, the whole point of democracy is that the voters will get what they want and get it good and hard.
Do the 'Mom Test' on any candidate and you will see why 9 out of 10 times a challenger to an incumbent fails [0]. The only challengers who succeed beat the 'good enough test' while simultaneously fending off the current administration's inertia (aptly put by paulgb)
[0] https://www.momtestbook.com/
the link seems to be an entire marketing campaign selling a book and a brand, with no "test" clearly specified - can you summarize it, please?
It’s running through questions like so: When you have an issue with county government, how do you handle it?
Their answer will tell you many things. Is it actually a concern the county can address? If it is not an issue the county can address, why do they think it is? If it’s a strong held belief, what experiences solidified it (buying a lot and being told one thing by a realtor, for example) - etc. you then use all of that to create a product (a campaign messaging) that aligns with the candidate and public’s opinion / current default mode.
The "Mom Test" is a term from a book by Rob Fitzpatrick titled "The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you". It is about customer development and strategies for entrepreneurs to properly validate their business ideas.
The title refers to the notion that even your mom, who generally loves you unconditionally, would lie to you to spare your feelings if your business idea wasn’t good. So, the "Mom Test" suggests a method of asking the right questions to get honest and useful feedback from people, including those who might be predisposed to be nice to you.
The key principles of the Mom Test are:
By following these principles, entrepreneurs can gather real insights into customer needs and challenges, which is crucial for validating and improving business ideas.1) You opponents campaign manager will lie about their candidate without qualms. 2) Donors will give money to a scoundrel, as long as they think the scoundrel will win. 3) Voters are actually good at picking up bullshit - in aggregate. 4) Rich white liberal female voters will not vote for a man. 5) Plenty of Black, Asian, and Immigrant voters are conservative, but many reflexively vote liberal. 6) Do it, even if you lose by a small amount like I did, you'll learn a lot and have a lot of fun
I'm conservative and found that I have so much in common with so many people that I'm sort of pissed that our culture has done it's best to keep us apart.
Not only that, it doesn't allow for distributed counts [2], it can wreck the secret ballot [3], and it is not monotonic [4]. Arrow gives us an impossibility result for elections but monotonicity is the worst criterion to give up, especially when the system has so many other flaws.
[0] https://rangevoting.org/TarrIrv.html
[1] see examples cited in https://rangevoting.org/NoIrv.html
[2] sure, you can transmit the contents of all of the ballots, but then it's still a centralized count...
[3] n! grows much much larger than population, so you can encode ballot ID
[4] http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/
People come to the question of voting assuming it's easy to understand...We've never had to deal with complexity around the concept so we expect it to be simple.
Introducing an algorithm plays into the fears of people who believe in a deep state which is secretly trying to manipulate people.
We deeply need a better voting system, but one of the core requirements must be that one can explain it to a middle schooler in 30 seconds.
The multiple choice question was: which of these answers lists the planets in order from smallest to largest diameter?
This was for a high school diploma equivalent! I was stumped for a while wondering if I was understanding the question correctly.
Anyway, I passed the test, but the fact this question was on there gave me serious doubts as to the general skill of the populace. I'm a fan of RCV over the current system, but I know it's going to trip a lot of people up.
With any RCV method, you win because math says so. In a normal election you count.
It's basically 100% guaranteed that someone who won most first choices but lost the election will try to delegitimize the election with stupid populism.
The first and most important job of an election is to ensure peaceful transfer of power.
My favorite alternate system is approval voting. Vote any number of candidates rather than just one. Most votes wins. 5 seconds and no nerd required.
And yet it’s happening in NYC:
_“The first Ranked Choice Voting election was on February 2nd, 2021 in a special election for NYC Council District 24 (Queens).”_
If you can make it in NYC, you can make it anywhere.
https://www.nyc.gov/site/civicengagement/voting/ranked-choic...
Weekend at Bernie's should remain a farce and not a commentary on reality.
Has many advantages over RCV / IRV (Ranked Choice Voting / Instant Runoff Voting). For one - no need to change ballots; educating the public is a single sentence rather than a more-complicated explanation.
https://electionscience.org/library/approval-voting/
Imagine a case where I really really want one guy, and between the remaining two I have a strong preference for one over the other. RCV lets me express that.
Approval would have been stuck. Should I mention the 2nd guy? I do want them if it came to having to choose but I’d hate to place them on even footing with my top top pick.
https://medium.com/election-science/expressiveness-6ef8c034b...
tl;dr - for any two candidates, X and Y, the voters who approve only one of them express a "ranked preference" between them. and because those voters are, on average, a good statistical sample of the X-vs-Y preference of the entire electorate, approval voting turns out to measure voter preferences very accurately.
whereas instant runoff voting can actually have much bigger problems in preference detection because it only looks at one layer of preferences at a time. for example:
35% left center 33% right center 32% center
in this example, center is preferred to both the left and the right by a LANDSLIDE 2/3rds majority, yet is the first candidate eliminated. this happens because of "vote splitting" (spoiler effect) between the two more partisan candidates. so it might _feel_ like you expressed your preferences better. but you didn't really.
and what about STRATEGIC VOTING?
if right wins, then the left supporters will wish they had strategically voted for center to prevent that. and if left wins, then right supporters will wish they had strategically voted for center to prevent that.
approval voting satisfies the "favorite betrayal criterion", which means it cannot possibly hurt you to support your sincere favorite candidate.
for these and many other reasons, approval voting is vastly superior to ranking. https://electionscience.org/library/approval-voting-versus-i...
They all have different strengths and weaknesses. We should be trying to move to more optimal systems.
Meanwhile approval voting is exhaustively explained by "vote for as many candidates as you like. Candidate with the most votes wins."
A "more optimal" voting system doesn't exist in a vacuum, public understanding and trust make a voting system more optimal. Just not more mathematically optimal.
approval voting is just score voting on a 0-1 binary scale. star voting is score voting on a 0-5 scale, followed by an "instant runoff" between the top two highest rated candidates.
> public understanding and trust make a voting system more optimal.
star voting: score the candidates from 0 - 5 and the winner is the majority favorite between the two highest rated overall.
there's no risk with public understanding here. i've worked on this subject since 2006, and conducted exit polls with score voting ballots within months of getting into this issue. people understand it just fine. it's radically simpler than ranking.
Alaska has the right idea: a jungle primary where the top-4 advance, followed by an RCV general. RCV by itself doesn't do much. You have to weaken the primary electorate, as Alaska does.
And while ranked choice voting is probably superior, it'd be a lot easier for one of the parties to implement RCV internally then call it a day. The major problem is that the primary system is too incumbent-friendly, making it hard for challengers to grow organically.
And I don't buy the argument that the US Congress Regulars have done a good job. They look like they've mucked a lot of stuff up, badly, and left a series of ruins behind them. Literally in many cases.
That's a fact, not a guess.
She should have left, but the reason she didn't should be happening either.
many of her constituents aren't allowed to vote
She wasn’t senile that entire time.
(I’ll quantify right wing: She voted with the Trump administration more than any other democrat, and voted like an average republican senator during his administration.)
That's nonsense. She voted like every other cookie cutter corporate Democrat, i.e. whatever her handlers told her to do. At the tail end of her career, it was pretty explicit (and disgusting to watch): https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/sen-dianne-feinste...
Some stats on here "voting with Trump": https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/
She's clearly not at the top of that pile when sorting by Democrats.
Her staff could just finish out her term and nothing would change but that's illegal because she's dead.
She was basically trapped in the job when the Senate refused to appoint Obama's pick to fill the vacant seat of Scalia. If she had retired it would have just been two empty seats for Trump to fill quicker. People were actively asking her to stay in the job.
Feinstein was a democratic senator in a democratic state with a democratic governor. She was actively being told she was unfit. She should have just retired.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/us/politics/rbg-retiremen...
I still remember the plethora of articles about RBG's supercool workout regimen dating back to the early 2010s because she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2009. The fixation on her health was largely because everyone knew this woman was getting ready to kick the bucket at some point, but she refused to make her exit before the Republicans took control over Congress.
Just some examples of what I'm talking about as evidence:
* https://www.yahoo.com/shine/healthy-living/ruth-bader-ginsbu...
* https://abovethelaw.com/2013/03/meet-the-personal-trainer-to...
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/personal-trainer-bryant...
* https://time.com/4804007/ruth-bader-ginsburgs-workout-book/ (a bit later but you get the idea)
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-chemerinsky-gins...
Obama met her when Democrats had a majority, and IIRC obliquely inquired/suggested that she retire and she brushed it off.
Obama may well have been right. But the suggestion should have come from one of the other liberals on the court. (And it may well have, for all we know. But we wouldn't hear about it one way or the other.)
I'm not convinced anyone in Congress has read that tale.
It outlives me when I'm gone
Like the scripture says:
'Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid.'
I wanna sit under my own vine and fig tree
A moment alone in the shade
At home in this nation we've made
One last time..."
-Hamilton An American Musical
Hooray for the 2-party system.
0 - https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/incumbent-adv...
And even then, they wouldn't keep getting major donor funding if they weren't voting in those people's interests, incumbent or no.
In general "I'll only ever vote X party" is the same as "I don't care who at all".
- https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/as-feinstein...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_congressional_insider_tra...
- https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/14/dianne-feinstein-hu...
etc.
Become congressperson. Use insider knowledge to make fortuitous trades, remain immune!
This to me falls under the “rules for thee not me.”
For sure you don't, it's the opposite. They sit on so much inside information that people outside the government would never have access to.
If you try and trade a name that's on a restricted trading list (e.g. because the investment banking part of your firm is working on a deal with them) then that is also going to be denied.
If you're wall-crossed (e.g. in possession of material, non-public information, even by accident) for a deal, you absolutely cannot trade in related securities - like, go to jail, do not pass go.
Even without term limits they should have the decency to know when to call it quits and not become a figurehead where most of the work they’re entrusted with is done behind the scenes by others —none of this bullshit whispering in their ear on how to vote.
At least have them have to pass significant cognitive tests by a panel of competent professionals who are voted in by both parties (or as many parties as have greater than 5% rep).
Weekend at Bernie's should remain a farce and not become reality.
If there's anything 2020-2021 and the 4th branch of the gov't taught me, it's that we need to quit putting authority figures in positions of power over the people, for the sole reason of being an authority figure.
I'm not asking for stringent qualifications. Bare minimum. Have time awareness, place awareness, be aware of the connection between action and consequences, have control over bodily functions. I'm not asking for a Chess champion or math wiz.
Just look how Trump tried to destroy the electoral system for his own gain before and on January 6th. Now apply his tactics to to a "committee" to decide if a democrat can seek reelection.
There is a good system to decide if the CEO is fit or not, it's the board of director. Those are entirely different systems.
But I think this can't realistically be just an issue of voting or not voting for individual elderly senate candidates, for a couple reasons:
- a 6 year term is a long time, and a lot can change during that period
- tenure in the Senate comes with placement on important committees; if your state wants their legislators in positions of power, you're pressured to allow them to accrue more tenure _so long as legislatures from other states are allowed to do the same_. Institutional-level limits on age or fitness must apply across the board.
- X is too old to serve is literally an ad-hominem attack in any given race and individuals competing for office choose not to use it because making that argument comes with real costs. We _should_ try to keep discourse in these races about policy issues. But retirement ages or fitness standards as an across-the-board policy proposal is an appropriate way to safeguard offices without descending into a personal attack about a person's un-chosen attributes.
Edit: I don't disagree with you in theory, but I don't think the system you propose is practicable.
The the American Association of Rapacious People can't have that.
It's probably likely that nobody voted for her in the last 20 years, instead voting for the party she represents. And they're probably roughly satisfied with the results, which means she provided little that an AI couldn't have done (a very simple one, something like VOTE=D).
This is likely true of almost all representatives. It's likely hard to find one that you can't simply predict how they will act.
Picking one number, based on input from experts in psychology and medicine, and applying it to all high-level public trust jobs, and putting it in law in our normal democratic processes would be no more arbitrary than the rule that the President must be at least 35.
I will point out that civilians who want "public trust" positions within the federal government or even as contractors are checked for a range of attributes which may make them potentially unfit for the responsibilities in question. Currently, my understanding is that subsequent to a clearance check, they must sign an agreement to not use substances like marijuana for the duration of their employment. This policy is _also_ not something that Americans voted for. I would argue that Feinstein, who often seemed not to know where she was, or McConnell, who is sometimes unaware that he was making remarks, are far more impaired than someone who occasionally enjoys an edible.
There are also political costs to opposing the incumbent from within the same party. Running a competitive race will be seen as disloyal by many people in the party. It's much less risky to just wait out the incumbent and then run.
For similar reasons, it's really suboptimal for the governor to be choosing Feinstein's interim replacement. Effectively one person will get to choose California's senator for the next 20-30 years.
Too soon?
I'm sure there are plenty of hypotheses as to why this happens, but whatever the cause elected officials seem to have an extremely easy go of getting re-elected these days. The increasing average age in Congress is just a side effect of that in my opinion.
If there are age minimums for these federal offices there should be age maximums.
Yes there are skills to be learned to be effective in such a system, but being too entrenched in it can lead to forming relationships that overshadow the relationship with their constituents.
Term limits are effective against populists, for whatever that's worth.
What you're describing sounds to me like the politicians are inconsequential puppets and the machine must be limited or removed. I could a tuallg get behind that idea, it wouldn't take much to convince me that term limits don't go after the real problem.
Maybe that would even include a Constitutional convention. I've long been of the opinion that we should be updating the Constitution more often, and more easily. It isn't intended to be frozen in amber.
Personally, I'd also be so interested to see what the political response would be today if a group of well known and respected individuals scheduled a constitutional convention to honestly hold such discussions. It's exactly what we did to being the process of breaking away from the king, I wonder if they would get shut down somehow?
This is somewhat inefficient but it also minimizes major problems.
I think this gets a bit further down the road than my original goal of a quick solution that could be implemented now for some benefit, but yeah I'd love to see power pushed as far down the hierarchy as possible.
Theres no magic bullet unfortunately. Any line in the sand will have people caught in the crossfire, whether that's a person over the age limit that would make an excellent representative or a person who is blocked from a third term that actually isn't corrupted by the machine of political favor, lobbyists, etc.
If the machine itself is broken, any changes or limitations to the output (the politicians here) are just bandaids. I do actually think we should fix the underlying problem, but hopefully term limits could buy us some time and start to remove power from those who gained so much by the system that needs fixing.
1- One six-year term on the presidency. Enough time to get stuff done and see the results, but then you're out. The current structure gives the American public 1-2 years of productivity, then they go into campaign mode on the tax payers dime.
2- All official party nominees get the exact same budget for campaigning. Creates a level playing field and neutralizes the power of lobbying
3- Congressman, Senators, Governors are limited to a single 6 year term. This will create a lot of churn, require voters to get engaged to understand the candidates better, and eliminate lifetime politicians who will inevitably be corrupted (I'm a cynic).
Need to ponder how to hedge the power of the people behind the scenes who support the office since they are unelected and undoubtedly powerful (I'm thinking about the people writing Biden's scripts, who are they, who elected them, what do they believ, etc.... we know he isn't doing it).
Give them a fixed number of years and have new ones appointed on a schedule that's synced to presidential terms.
Imagine working at a job where there were rules that forced your company to lay off all the most experienced folks after a few years.
Sounds miserable to me.
The president shouldn't be any more popular or powerful than a Senator or representative in Congress, arguably they should be less so because Congress writes the laws and controls the budget. But the way American politics works, driven by populism and celebrity worship, you'd think the President controls the entire government like the CEO of a company.
Remove their power to pardon and issue executive orders - a President shouldn't have the authority to overrule the judicial or legislative branches. Give them a single. six year term. Make it illegal for them to hold any further government position, then boot them out. The Presidency should be nothing more than a revolving door of nobody bureaucrats, like a Prime Minister.
Also, they shouldn't get Secret Service protection for life. They can have the same Second Amendment protections as other citizens after office, which are supposed to be perfectly sufficient. Or let them hire private security.
It is a special case.
Unless you are saying we need to abolish the position entirely and just rely on the legislative and judicial branches of the government on their own.
But until that happens the presidency is a very specific position that only one person holds. But at the end of the day, Congress as a whole holds more power, so term limits in Congress I would consider much more impactful (in a bad way) than term limits on the presidency.
I'm not saying that, although I do find the idea appealing. Mostly I'm saying the position of President has been elevated in the ideals of American politics far out of proportion that what it should be, and the position itself has all of these weird Neo-monarchical backdoors to give the Presidency some degree of carte blanche power over the other branches, just because the founding fathers didn't trust the other branches to be capable of doing their jobs.
American Presidential elections have become national events to rival the Superbowl, but few Americans care nearly as much about judges, or Senators or Congress, much less local government. By default, most will write off the entirety of government as a fully corrupt, perfectly incompetent sewer, not worth engaging with, believing in or thinking about beyond spite. Only the President is seen to have true agency, can be justified as representing the people, and has the power to enable actual change, almost through sheer force of will alone. At least if they're from your party.
I just think the balance is entirely out of whack but I'm not certain whether that's a symptom of merely politics or a flaw in the system itself.
Oh add both of those to the list of things I wish we could remove! Pardon are often used as little more than political capital, and executive orders reek of executive overreach and an abuse of power.
I see a need for impartial testing of "able to do the job", such as "can count backwards from 20 without falling asleep or missing any numbers or going briefly catatonic".
Term limits definitely aren't a magic fix, I just see the tradeoffs as worth it relative to my personal concerns.
How does forcing new candidates every number of years ensure that elected officials will be "popular and effective at their job"?
I don't actually like governments creating regulations and drawing lines in the sand. As many have raised with term limits, it isn't a perfect answer and at best bandaids the real problem rather than fixing it.
I'd argue that's the case with any regulation emposed on large populations, there are just too many complexities at that scale to draw a clean line. With term limits specifically, I see it as an unfortunate but possibly necessary tradeoff that may at least give us a chance to start fixing the real problem. We both need more time to find the right answer, and we need to remove those who collected so much power and control from the same system that needs to be fixed in the first place.
And there is nothing that prevents the replacements from abusing the power and control afforded to them in similar or worse ways. They'll be kicked out regardless of what they do, so why care about the long term?
If power is largely collected by the office itself, or the party behind the talking head, then I agree replacing them more often may not help much.
It might be better to lower the income to 90th or 50th percentile, so only people that actually wanted the job would take it.
Ideally, the restrictions would extend to the kids. It would definitely extend to the spouses.
Also, all no campaign donations over $50. Finally, all campaign communications must be publicly archived in realtime, and no more political ads. (The latter is because some politicians now tell different, personalized lies to each constituent, thanks to the internet).
Another possibility is to let anyone volunteer for congress, then pick the winner at random from the pool each term. This worked amazingly well for local positions in some country that tried it. (Government efficiency immediately doubled or something.)
I see that as a different problem to solve, but yeah if the solution to one can supercede the other I'd get behind that.
I actually really hate this idea whenever it comes up, at least for the kids. It feels rather oppressive that you could have your largely-estranged parent decide to get into politics, and have that entirely derail your life.
The current system gives us a bunch of grifters like the Trump kids or Hunter Biden, to be sure, but I'd rather directly punish the parent who's being corrupt than their children who don't even hold office.
A wealthy person is also totally fine with whatever the salary is, because they already have a bunch of money.
I'm sure there are plenty of hypotheses as to why this happens, but whatever the cause elected officials seem to have an extremely easy go of getting re-elected these days. The increasing average age in Congress is just a side effect of that in my opinion.
As you say, it's easy to point to the folks who have been in office forever as being an issue, but there's also staff and lobbyists and other unelected roles that are hard to get rid of the influence of. At the end of the day, someone needs to be the expert, either on the vast array of issues that can come up in national government, or in how to actually do something about those issues.
If a lot of the "real" work is done by the staffers, career government workers, etc then the politician really is the public face and occasionally redirecting the ship. I'd say there is less risk there and more to gain from fresh faces and opinions in that spot, again if that's how the workload shakes out behind the scenes
Yes, you heard me. I am not even going to pause for a condolance or bite my tongue. I'm glad she's gone. She was 100% unfit for the position in the last few years of her life and nothing was done about it. This is a problem with US Politics, they are too fucking old to represent the actual population so they are pulled by SIGs and lobbyists. We are not accurately represented.
We need term limits in the Senate. She was part of the problem, and the problem needs to be fixed.
A mentor of mine used to remind me, "always react with class". I fail at this a lot, but try.
I think it would be good for you to try too.
And also to remember that she was fairly elected. She was who the people wanted. If you want to be angry, be angry at the people who continued to elect her.
Maybe not so much vitrol directed at her on a day of tragedy.
Nevertheless attempts to pin the blame on her for things her constituency was obviously happy or oblivious to is misguided.
Term limits give more power to the lobbyists and other back-room powers, because they are never term limited, and they quickly learn how to be exceptionally persuasive to newbie representatives.
At least a non-limited representative has the chance to learn to resist, thought it's pretty darn rare. Term limits would snuff that out entirely.
You feel like heaping vitrol on a recently deceased person is an acceptable thing to do?
My point was about reacting with class.
You don't have to live that way, but practicing it makes your life and the lives of those around you better.
I agree with your other points though.
One of the unintended consequences of term limits is the strengthening of the bureaucracy.
But heaping vitriol does much more against the heaper than the heapee, in almost all cases.
Who was supposed to do something?
There should be age limits for public office and it should match whatever we consider the retirement age to be. We have too many dusty old codgers running things and ruining things, clawing at power and money while destroying civilization for their great grandchildren (which is all the worse, because they’ve met them).
When I see someone like Feinstein elected repeatedly, it’s blatant evidence of how broken politics is in America. In California, apparently, policy positions, personal character, and corruption don’t matter, you can elect a corpse in a wheelchair if it has a D next to its name, and they did.
That would create wrong incentives for pushing the retirement age upwards though.
People over 70 should not be running the country, and currently the median Congressperson is on social security. We have a problem.
At least now you have the (minuscule, I admit) chance that some secure senator will go against his or her party because they know their seat is secure in re-election.
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12393
"Colleagues, critics and an increasingly restive field of aspiring successors have questioned her health and fitness for office — a concern, her supporters noted, that few have raised for male octogenarians in the Senate — but friends said she made her decision on her own timetable."
Proof is in the pudding, eh? But more seriously, plenty have criticized McConnell for his public health lapses, and the two of them together kicked off a lot of bipartisan (citizen) grumbling about old politicians. Then of course our main presidential candidates...
The kerfuffle about sexism when criticizing Feinstein is hogwash.
I don't know her full legacy, and I recall her being a good thorn in the side of Bush when he needed one. Sad it took this event to get a replacement.
And Newsom promised to put in a black woman, but also promised not to put in someone actually running for Senate. I wonder if the relevant groups of citizens care about that declaration.