CP and I see eye-to-eye on relatively few things, but Term Limits is one of them. The subject came up in another thread, and Terraceth asked:
I frankly don't know the answer to this. CP then responded by noting he also didn't know an answer or how one would prove this. He then provided an interesting link to a Brookings Institute article against term limits.
Starlight then posted this thought-provoking response:
So - this is the thread devoted to discussing the issue. Term limits. Good idea? Bad idea? I'm finding myself rethinking my position.
Have term limits actually been shown to fix these problems? I'm legitimately curious.
I frankly don't know the answer to this. CP then responded by noting he also didn't know an answer or how one would prove this. He then provided an interesting link to a Brookings Institute article against term limits.
Starlight then posted this thought-provoking response:
My country has no term limits, and I don't recall ever hearing anybody here even suggest them... and we nonetheless rank as a contender for best-functioning democracy in the world. (And of the top 10 democracies on that list, not a single one has term limits for their politicians - 2 of the 10 have a ceremonial position that is term limited but no term limits on the executive authority roles) So I am deeply skeptical that term limits would actually achieve the positive outcomes that their advocates in the US think they would.
In my own experience, the single biggest democratic improvement in my lifetime - by far and away - was when my country changed the voting system away from plurality voting. It resulted in us going from 2 parties to 7 parties in the course of one election to the next. It meant politicians could no longer say to their base "you have to hold your nose and vote for me, because I'm not as bad as the other guy" and instead they had to convince their base they were better than representatives of other parties on their own part of the political spectrum. Politicians had to compete to be the best, not compete to be the 2nd-worst.
In the US, the voting system for federal elections is controlled by individual states. Maine has recently adopted Ranked Choice voting (aka Instant Runoff), which is a very good method IMO (we use it here for local elections, but IMO it's better for national elections than local ones as it works better the more people know about more of the candidates and in local elections you often don't know much about a lot of the candidates). At a theoretical level, STAR voting seems to be about the best possible voting system, although as far as I am aware it hasn't been implemented anywhere in practice.
I believe changing the US voting systems to either of these methods would actually fix the problems that advocates of 'term limits' are seeking to address, but I doubt term limits would fix those same problems.
In my own experience, the single biggest democratic improvement in my lifetime - by far and away - was when my country changed the voting system away from plurality voting. It resulted in us going from 2 parties to 7 parties in the course of one election to the next. It meant politicians could no longer say to their base "you have to hold your nose and vote for me, because I'm not as bad as the other guy" and instead they had to convince their base they were better than representatives of other parties on their own part of the political spectrum. Politicians had to compete to be the best, not compete to be the 2nd-worst.
In the US, the voting system for federal elections is controlled by individual states. Maine has recently adopted Ranked Choice voting (aka Instant Runoff), which is a very good method IMO (we use it here for local elections, but IMO it's better for national elections than local ones as it works better the more people know about more of the candidates and in local elections you often don't know much about a lot of the candidates). At a theoretical level, STAR voting seems to be about the best possible voting system, although as far as I am aware it hasn't been implemented anywhere in practice.
I believe changing the US voting systems to either of these methods would actually fix the problems that advocates of 'term limits' are seeking to address, but I doubt term limits would fix those same problems.
So - this is the thread devoted to discussing the issue. Term limits. Good idea? Bad idea? I'm finding myself rethinking my position.
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