Time Enough to Last? Age Limiting Members of Congress Passes Ballot in North Dakota

Photo by Andreas Bohnenstengel, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons

This will be fun to talk about until the courts get around to throwing it out. In North Dakota, voters passed a ballot measure that would limit a member of Congress from running if they would turn 81 by the end of their potential term.

NY Times:

The ballot measure, to amend the North Dakota Constitution, bars congressional candidates who would turn 81 or older by the end of the year before their term ends from being eligible for office.

The measure provided a rare glimpse into how one state’s voters think about age at a time when questions over the effectiveness of older political leaders have been part of the national conversation.

The campaign in North Dakota to pass an age limit on the state’s members of Congress began as many Americans have debated whether age ought to be a factor in this year’s presidential contest. President Biden is 81, and his opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, is 77.

As a practical matter, the rule does not pose a threat to the state’s three current federal lawmakers, all Republicans, who range in age from 47 to 67.

Jared Hendrix, 41, a Republican politician from Fargo who led the effort to put the question on the ballot, said he saw it as an opportunity to elevate the debate about whether older politicians can govern effectively.

“I think it’s very possible that if we pull this off here, other states will follow,” he said before the election.

In 2022, Mr. Hendrix led a successful effort to set term limits for governor and state legislators.

North Dakota lawmakers anticipated that the new measure would be challenged in court if approved. A Supreme Court case in 1995 established that states cannot add eligibility restrictions beyond those in the Constitution. The Constitution establishes age minimums to serve in Congress — 25 in the House and 30 in the Senate — but federal lawmakers may serve as long as they continue winning races.

If you are curious as to the crack about the courts throwing this out, the Supreme Court ruling in Term Limits, Inc v Thornton has this pretty well covered, at least until a different version of the Supreme Court decides otherwise. In short, the legal aspect of this is pretty well set that adding requirements to federal office is not going to fly.

But the idea is a good one. While some will howl about ageism, the idea that we have mandatory retirement for the military but not for those tasked with funding and oversight for that same military should not be some taboo thing that cannot at least be discussed. All members of congress are mortal, all are – we think, at least – human beings, and all of them are going to grow old and die. Part of that growing old and dying process usually has a decline in abilities and faculties that go along with it. While putting some kind of statutory acknowledgement of this immutable fact of life would be reasonable politics, power and the perception of picking on the olds who hold a disproportionate amount of that power ensure such a thing isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

But reality doesn’t care about perceptions. And the reality is we’ve seen some frankly disturbing and embarrassing scenes in Congress and the US Senate of members clearly not able to do their duties yet wheeled around as if they are for… reasons. The reality is that we, as a people, are about to pick between a clearly declining current president who is 81 – and would be 82 on inauguration day if re-elected, and would be 86 at the end of that possible term – and a 77 year old former president who has pending criminal court cases, felony convictions pending appeals, and says even crazier things than the 81 year old – but that lunacy is somehow the key tenet to his brand.

What a sad testimony to the representative government we have decided best represents us. Political inertia is, apparently, one hell of an electoral drug.

Were I God-King of All Things, age limits on elected office would be something I would do by decree, with violations punishable by one year’s service as pages for the Del Boca Vista condo board meetings. But I’m not, and judicial review is what it is. Thus is thus…and age limits for members of Congress probably won’t change anytime soon. And we aren’t getting any younger. Good luck in court, North Dakota; you are going to need it. Neither time nor the law is on your side.