Over three-fourths of Americans think there should be a maximum age limit for elected officials, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey.

  • Mudface@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Why don’t they just vote for younger people? Why does there need to be a law?

    • chaogomu@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      First past the post voting is why.

      So many problems go back to that.

      But in this case, committee assignment is based on seniority. So the longest serving members get first dibs. This means that to keep power, the parties must put money into keeping incumbents in place.

      • Mudface@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’m Canadian, we don’t have this problem. I don’t think they do in the UK or Europe either.

        You guys didn’t either, until just more relatively recently. Feels gross, it feels corrupt

        • chaogomu@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          First Past the Post is an issue in Canada and the UK as well.

          I tend to advocate for STAR, because it seems to be one of the best voting systems ever designed. Sadly, the people who were elected thanks to FPtP don’t want to surrender power by switching to a better voting system. This is why you sometimes see these ghouls pushing things like Ranked Choice, a system that is only marginally better than FPtP, if you ignore some massive (and exploitable) flaws.

        • Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 year ago

          You need to read more news. Yes, you absolutely fucking have this problem in Canada. Why am I still hearing about Doug Ford, huh? And in the UK they have a different variance of problems, because they have passed about half of the reforms necessary to solve this.

    • Bye@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Because older politicians are more established and have larger networks to support/bribe them.

      • Mudface@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        But like I said, there are politicians in other countries too. This seems to be exclusively an American oddity

    • Drusas@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Because seniority gets you the powerful positions. So its beneficial to a party and its constituents to keep the same person in place as long as possible so that they get the more powerful assignments.

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      We know they don’t. It doesn’t really matter why, unless you think there’s some as-yet-unknown reason why it’s actually a good thing that people vote that way

    • Indyraps@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Our options are guys they fall upstairs and stroke out reading teleprompters. We don’t get a choice of young people lol they get voted by in primaries not by voters but funding and politico. if they even make it there.