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Hugh's avatar

Term limits are bad, at least for legislators.

Experience in California has shown that when you have relatively short term limits in the assembly/senate, inexperienced legislators show up, get pitched by lobbyists on a law they can quickly propose and get passed, and tend to go for this so they will have some achievement before they are term limited. Then the legislator uses this to go from assembly/house to senate and so on.

Meanwhile the lobbyists are not term-limited, and you prevent the legislators getting enough experience to see through the lobbyists.

Really, term limits are evidence of a bug where legislators don't fear losing their seats in elections enough. For example in the UK there are no term limits, but half or more of Conservative MPs are about to be kicked out by voters as soon as there's an election this year. "Losing election" should be a higher risk for the GOP here too.

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Dan-o's avatar

So really the issue should be gerrymandering and outlawing it.

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SandyG's avatar

That's up to each state's voters. Not SCOTUS. For them, it's a political question. More on that here, for those interested: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII-S2-C1-9-1/ALDE_00001283/#:~:text=The%20political%20question%20doctrine%20limits,mootness%2C%20would%20otherwise%20be%20met.

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