A recent poll by Survey USA says almost 80% of New York residents favor state legislative term limits. See this story. Thanks to Paul Jacob for the link.
A recent poll by Survey USA says almost 80% of New York residents favor state legislative term limits. See this story. Thanks to Paul Jacob for the link.
Term limits are a fraud.
You term out one legislator who was bought and paid for by special interests only to replace him with another legislator bought and paid for by the special interests. This is not reform.
Aside from a hardcore few, most people only favor term limits for politicians they don’t like.
I think the same rules we apply to politicians should be applied to voters.
TERM LIMITS. We should have term limits for voters. I’ll just throw out a random number of 20 years. It would be up to the individual voter when to start those 20 years, but when they are done, they are done. No more voting.
OPENNESS IN GOVERNMENT. How our elected officials vote is public record. I think it should be public record for whom each voter votes.
FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE. Just as many states require detailed campaign finance records as well as ethics disclosure statements for candidates, every voter should have to disclose his/her personal finances, including loans, bank accounts, stocks, etc.
Actually, all the research I have read says that term limits generally do not make government more responsive or ethical.
People who have held public office for awhile, often know how the system works and can use it to the benifit of their State, district and or constituents.
It might be better — from what I have read — to have more competitive elections with some form of proportional representation.
OTOH, if you combine term limits with PR and low salaries
(how does New Hampshire work with its unpaid-they receive a nominal sum-legislature?)you might encourage high quality people to volunteer for the legislature if they didn’t have to be subservient to the usual collection of low-IQ mediocrities,liars, whores and thieves.
Well-maybe.
Let ’em serve as many terms as they want…just not CONSECUTIVE terms. There would be NO INCUMBANTS, and no politicians currently in office would be able to waste their taxpayer paid salary running for office while in office.
And, they would all be lame ducks, so to speak, so no politician would be voting a certain way to get re-elected. Thus, no incentive to accept corporate $$.
However, those (most) with future political aspirations would still want to vote/act responsibly for when running for re-election 2+ terms out.
Apply this rule to ALL FEDERAL ELECTED OFFICES: U.S. House, Senate, AND President: Cannot run for federal office unless out of federal office for at least the length of the term of the office sought. RESULT: 6 yrs in Senate, private/state/local office for 6 yrs, then can run for Senate again. Congresscritter: 2yrs in, 2 yrs out (or back to state office), run again; 4yrs president, 4yrs private life, can run for president again after 4yrs while a private citizen.
#1. You’re pretty much right on the money. There’s never a shortage of bad politicians so term limits would only give us a false sense of improved representation. It’s the voters that need to be reformed so bad politicians have a harder time getting in and only serve single terms when they do.