Do you think there should be term limits for every elected position in Government? If so how many years for each position?

37 comments

1. I don’t think there should be term limits, let people elect who they want to elect

2. Not particularly.

   I tend to think this removes the ability of the elected officials to throw their weight around and hands the power to the unelected campaigning machines that are the state and national parties.

   Without career politicians and given the way elections go in this country the parties would get to just hurl money at anyone that will toe the line for them and win most of the seats that way.

   Just…seems like a good way to push even more power out of the hands of people that we at least get a chance to vote about.

3. Yes I do. But I would say up to ten years. After ten years you cannot run for the same office again but you can run for another position in government

4. Yes absolutely, the longer they are in those positions, the more corrupt they become.

   I despise our current system

5. I think there should be term limits for consecutively holding the same position. So you can serve two terms, then take a term off, then try to get elected again.

   Having people rotate jobs is a good control for reducing corruption. It’s not perfect, because collusion, but it’s better than nothing.

   It’s less efficient to have term limits and you lose some institutional knowledge but that’s the sacrifice that you make for reducing corruption.

   If you had a non-profit that had a board of directors that never changed, that would be a big red flag that maybe there is corruption or special interest at work.

   I also think there should be a cool-down period between working in an industry and then taking a job that regulates that industry. If you’ve held a job in the oil industry, you shouldn’t be eligible to work at the oil industry regulators for six years or so.

6. The time in office for each term is set so that would be hard to change imo. Personally I would set it up so someone could do a full career in politics but limit it to around 20 years at a national level. So 10-12 years in the house and 10-12 years in the Senate max while putting an age limit in the low 80s to avoid some of the issue we are having with people sitting in office for decades.

7. No, it would just make parties and special interest groups even stronger.

8. Voting is all the term limits needed.

9. I’m personally against term limits.

10. Term limits are inherently undemocratic. For term limits to be just, their benefits have to outweigh their inherent undemocratic characteristics.

    I am okay with this for SCOTUS or the president, since those are individually powerful positions who need considerable limits on power. Members of Congress are not individually powerful to such a degree that I think we need term limits for them.

11. Yes. Three terms in the Senate, nine in the House.

12. I think the biggest one we need is a limit on how long people can stay on the supreme court. max it for 15 years.

13. A two term, 8 year maximum for congress would ensure you always have inexperienced legislators running the show. It would also ruin any attempt at long term coalitions across the aisle.

    There’s also the issue of legislators doing absolutely nothing in their final term because there can’t be any consequences to it since they can’t get reelected anyway.

14. The problem with term limits is that they militate against expertise and toward ideologues and low-info extremists.

    What needs to be limited is the influence of money in elections.

15. Five terms or ten years for members of the House of Representatives. You get a mix of experience and turnover.

16. No. All term limits do is increase the frequency of inexperienced people taking over an important position.

17. We have term limits in Michigan

    We just voted to change/extend the term limits because of how much of a disaster short term limits ended up being.

    Lansing has always been fucked. But it’s worse when it became a revolving door of people who had zero idea (or desire) to be legislators

    Edit Grammar

18. No. Some states that have enacted term limits highlight the downside of doing so.

19. Yes

20. No, we need Age limits, not term limits.

21. No, not for every position. I am not a fan of lame duck terms because they lower politicians’ accountability to their constituents.

    In an ideal world, politicians would fear pissing off their base.

22. No. Experience is important when crafting legislation. I think there should be term limits for executives like governors and presidents but not for legislators.

23. I think the bigger issue are the unelected career bureaucrats infesting the alphabet agencies. Congress has given away too much of it’s power.

    I would be open to discussing the pros and cons kf term limits on congress, but I don’t see a need to change the years that make a single term.

24. No, and I don’t have objections to removing term limits for the president. Doesn’t make much sense to me to forcibly prevent a competent leader from participating in democratic elections.

25. I always liked what a lot of Latin American countries do where it’s something like a single 6-year term.

26. Not term limits but retirement at the age of 60-70. All a term limit will do is put power into the hands of unelected bureaucrats and encourage policymakers to think in the short term because what ever problems they make in the long term will be someone else’s problem.

27. No. There is immense value in having certain government offices occupied by people who are experienced and familiar with their colleagues.

    If you think Congress is a mess now, imagine how much worse it would be if everyone acted as if they would never see the other person again after a couple years.

28. Its a good idea on paper, but either the terms have to be sufficiently long enough, or you’re just gonna end up booting people who want the job and are qualified for it out of office pretty quickly.

    I would go 4-6 year terms, 4-5 terms max if we did end up having term limits.

29. Term limit by way of forced retirement. Once you’re past a certain age, you really don’t have the ability to govern properly anymore. The world changes too quickly and your experiences aren’t applicable to modern life, so you need to step aside and let the younger generations take the reins.

30. No, I dont have a problem with unlimited terms. There should, however, be age limits. The older you get, the worse your cognitive abilities get and the more out of touch with people you get. When you turn, say 65, you should be out.

31. We have term limits. That’s what voting is for.

    A person’s term is up when the voters decide it is.

32. Not necessarily. I live in a state that has term limits for legislators and for every problem it solved it’s created a new one.

    I do think limiting the length of a supreme court term would benefit the country as a whole. Limit justices to a single 18-year term, staggered so that a new justice is appointed every 2 years. It would end a lot of the political fuckery surrounding appointment of justices. It would also hopefully lead to appointments more focused on the best candidate rather than the youngest one who’ll be able to serve for longer before they die/retire.

33. We have term limits. They called elections.

34. There is a term limit, it’s called the electorate. If the people believe someone is too old they’ll vote them out

35. I think having an upper age limit would be better than term limits.

36. No. People should stop voting for politicians if they aren’t doing their job or are corrupt.

37. No. It detracts from the will of the people