Rich Felker
I've written about qualification requirements for holding elected or appointed office before, and one concern often raised is how they could be politicized/weaponized against already marginalized folks.
One very simple requirement that shouldn't be subject to this problem though, is that to hold office at level N+1, you must have been reelected in a position at level N.
I.e. folks were happy enough with your work at lower level to keep you at least once.
Rich Felker
This kind of requirement would completely eliminate bullshit sponsored spoiler candidates like (US) Green Party as well as entertainers & reality TV asshats like Reagan and Trump.
Rob Landley
@dalias If you want a gerontocracy, that's certainly a way to ensure it.
Rich Felker
@landley 🙄
Rich Felker
@landley Like, we already have gerontocracy. There are ways you mitigate that (like term limits) but "we have to allow completely unqualified ppl to run for and hold office" is not one of them.
Rob Landley
@dalias Pelosi wanted to make sure AOC wouldn't run for president the first time she'd be constitutionally old enough, and you agree with Pelosi.
Rich Felker
@landley Huh? Not sure what you're talking about. AOC has experience now and has proven she's the real deal. Running for President without any would have been a joke.
Rob Landley
@dalias She never held a state level office before running for congress, thus should have been barred from running by your logic. And the senate is N+1 from the house, as Katie Porter recently attempted, so jumping straight to president? And you said "re-elect", Obama was never reelected to the senate, he only served 3 years...
I dunno why you think credentialism and seniority would fix things rather than be weaponized against us.
Rich Felker
@landley It's pointless to suppose events would proceed in the same way with different rules. Maybe (depending on if House even had such a rule, which is less needed with larger assemblies) AOC wouldn't have taken office under such a rule, but a lot of extremely harmful ppl wouldn't have either. Of course it would also encourage participation at lower levels as a necessary stepping stone, which our democracy desperately needs.
Rich Felker
@landley I'm sorry if you disagree but my basic premise is that keeping extremely harmful ppl who exploit popularity out of office is more important than getting any particular person in office.
Rob Landley
@dalias Reagan was governor of California in 1966, but you would have excluded Zelensky from office. I'm really not seeing how your plan improves matters.
Rich Felker
@landley You can pick and choose examples all you like but that's not data. Yes you can get lucky. Democracy shouldn't depend on getting lucky. If you want to discuss this rigorously it needs data not anecdotes. But you'd also need to consider how such a rule would have changed behavior to potentially qualify ppl who weren't qualified in our timeline.
Rich Felker
@landley Because it's a concept not a detailed implementation proposal. It's not about stopping "one guy". It's about mitigating two critical vulnerabilities of US style electoral democracy without completely redesigning it. (Those being spoiler candidates with no intent to win or govern, and demagogues.)
Rob Landley
@dalias And you're not cherry picking something to stop this one guy?
Your N+1 thing is not well defined. Truman and Eisenhower were generals, does that count? Are you allowed to jump straight into being a state governor or do you need to serve on a school board or something first? Bush Sr wasn't _elected_ CIA director, nor was Hillary elected Secretary of State.
"Democracy isn't good enough, we need to stop people from voting for candidates I don't like" is more often about racism/sexism...
Rob Landley
@dalias I think mirroring the minimum age of 35 with a maximum age of 65 to take the oath of office at the start of a term would be more effective. And more justifiable in context, since we've already got that metric in play and it's unambiguous.
Rich Felker
@landley That solves a completely different problem.
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