[crazygringo]

That's where it gets tricky.

Ultimately, rules come from the people in a democracy.

If they decide they want a candidate who broke the rules, that's where it gets messy in political philosophy.

Should the democratic will of the people from years ago or decades ago override the democratic will of the people now? Of course that's the general idea of having constitutions and such, but it can only ever be a matter of degree, and there's no right answer as to how much.

[surgical_fire]

There's nothing messy about this.

Rules should be followed. If when rules are broken no punishment is applied, the rules are meaningless. Once rules become meaningless, everyone will be emboldened to break the rules, to the detriment of society as a whole.

If you want the rules changed, vote for them being changed, don't give free pass for any asshole to break them.

[crazygringo]

Of course it's messy.

> Rules should be followed.

But free, democratic elections is a "rule" too -- not just a rule, but a bedrock principle.

Why should people be prevented from voting now for someone because of previous rules made by a previous electorate? Why should someone from the past be allowed to nullify my preferred vote in the present?

There's always something inherently anti-democratic about preventing someone from running for office. The question is whether it's outweighed by other democratic concerns. It's messy.

[ahtihn]

> Why should people be prevented from voting now for someone because of previous rules made by a previous electorate? Why should someone from the past be allowed to nullify my preferred vote in the present?

All elections follow rules set by a previous electorate unless you want to first vote on defining the rules for an election every time you have an election.

If Trump were to actually run for a 3rd term, would you argue that he should be able to because term limits were set in place by a previous electorate?

[crazygringo]

Obviously they have to follow the rules for how to count votes, establish boundaries, etc.

But there is definitely a serious philosophical argument that term limits are inherently undemocratic.

I personally think they're necessary, but at the same time I realize they are undemocratic. They're literally taking away the ability for an electorate to freely choose.

All I'm saying is, the tradeoffs get messy. Restricting candidates from running can be a slippery slope. Look at what's happening in Turkey, where the popular opposition candidate was just barred from running. How do you know when you've gone too far? Barring candidates can corruptly entrench power, even when following the "rules" to the letter. What then?

[matthewdgreen]

This entire argument can be summarized as "no popular politician should ever have to obey any law." I realize you'll respond that you don't mean anything that extreme, of course. But the set of principles you're trying to articulate are, in fact, exactly that extreme. I don't want to live in that world and neither will you, when you have to experience it.

[QuadmasterXLII]

I expect I’m going to be hearing “term limits are inherently undemocractic” pretty fucking frequently for the next three years

[johnbronnan]

Erdogan has consolidated power independently and undemocratically and is using it to jail his opponents. That is completely different from this situation where a politician is engaging in anti-democratic actions and is then barred from running by an independent judiciary.

> term limits are inherently undemocratic

A society where the people are not able to participate in the electoral process is not a democratic society. True democracies represent the will of all people, regardless of whether they are part of the majority or whether they were eligible to vote in the single election which transitioned the political system from democracy to dictatorship.

[psychlops]

Oh, Erdogan consolidated his power over the last few decades democratically. Rural turks came out in mass to vote for him over past decades. Incidentally, in the past he was actually jailed by his political opponents and banned from politics.

[wkat4242]

> Look at what's happening in Turkey, where the popular opposition candidate was just barred from running.

Ironically Turkey is in this situation precisely because Erdogan removed term limits and spent decades consolidating his power. Same with China where Xi Jinping did the same. And Russia with Putin. All prime examples of functioning democracies, right?

These rules are specially to prevent people from setting themselves up as emperor for life and if they are removed that's almost always the exact thing that happens.

Democracy isn't a perfect system, as much as Americans tend to believe it is. It needs some guidelines to keep it functional. And even with them it's a compromise, not perfection.

[surgical_fire]

> Barring candidates can corruptly entrench power, even when following the "rules" to the letter. What then?

Bold claim. Bold claims require bold evidence. You provided none.

[crazygringo]

Two sentences previous, I literally stated:

> Look at what's happening in Turkey, where the popular opposition candidate was just barred from running.

Are you aware of the current situation in Turkey? If that's not bold evidence, I literally don't know what is.

[ahtihn]

I mean you could easily argue that any election rules are undemocratic. The rules for the US presidential election are quite flawed for example.

The rules can be changed but again there are rules for how to do that! It's rules all the way down.

You can't have a functioning democratic system without rules.

The problems start when people start thinking that rules don't matter or aren't applied evenly.

[surgical_fire]

> not just a rule, but a bedrock principle.

Only when the rules are respected by everyone involved.

If we are playing football (or soccer for the barbarians across the pond), a core principle is to score goals. If in the middle of the game I punch you in the face, that principle stops mattering super fast.

> Why should people be prevented from voting now for someone because of previous rules made by a previous electorate?

Because that is how rules and regulations work. If you want them changed, change them properly, don't go breaking them because your pet right wing politician was punished for breaking them.

> There's always something inherently anti-democratic about preventing someone from running for office

I fundamentally disagree. The only thing anti-democratic is to allow someone that does not respect the democratic rules for running for office, for they will undermine democracy from within.

[psychlops]

> The only thing anti-democratic is to allow someone that does not respect the democratic rules for running for office, for they will undermine democracy from within.

Surely you see the catch in this belief. If there is a group of people who can "allow" others to run for election then the system is not democratic at its core.

[surgical_fire]

> If there is a group of people who can "allow" others to run for election then the system is not democratic at its core.

It is democratic at its core. Any democracy has an independent judicial system that can ensure that rules are being followed properly.

Separation of powers between executive, legislative and judiciary, does it ring a bell to you?

If the judiciary stops doing its job of banning those that would cheat elections, you wouldn't have a democracy anymore.

[psychlops]

Or if the judiciary has any sort of bias as is implied in this case. (I don't pretend to know the details)

I enthusiastically endorse the separation of powers and firmly believe that people should follow systems, not people. Perhaps it just a global coincidence, but the recent spate of candidate disqualification (US, Romania, Turkey, France) gives the appearance of democratic decay.

[ModernMech]

Only if those people act in anti-democratic ways. E.g. if they apply the law selectively, if they forego or restrict due process, and if they play around with the meaning of words and crimes then yeah, that's anti-democratic. For example, people brought up what's happening in Turkey, and I agree what's happening there is anti-democratic.

But if the people involved are not making up crimes, but prosecuting crimes; if they are not targeting people specifically, but enforcing the law that applies to everyone; and if they are allowing for the maximum possible due process, then there really isn't much of a case for that process being anti-democratic.

[teg4n_]

> There's always something inherently anti-democratic about preventing someone from running for office.

i’m curious, do you think age minimums are ok? i feel like with this opinion have to throw out all restrictions on the ability to run for office to be consistent.

[darthrupert]

Nobody is prevented from voting by this sentence.

[rayiner]

You're acting like computers, or neutral actors external to the political system, decide "when rules are broken" and what "punishment" to apply.

That's entirely the wrong way to think about government. Government isn't about rules, it's about allocation of power. You have to think about government in terms of who is entrusted with power to make which decisions. If you entrust judges and lawyers to decide "when rules are broken" by elected officials, you give them power over those officials, and over voters.

Now that's okay to a degree, but the question is: where does the buck stop? If you design a system where the buck stops with lawyers and judges, then you've effectively given those lawyers and judges power to overrule voters. It's better to design a system where the lawyers and judges demur in situations like this, to avoid a "tail wagging the dog" situation where the legal system is invoked to resolve a political dispute.

[surgical_fire]

> If you entrust judges and lawyers to decide "when rules are broken" by elected officials, you give them power over those officials, and over voters.

What you are describing is the judiciary in any functioning democracy. Separation of powers requires an independent judiciary system.

They have to be unelected, so they keep their independence when evaluating if the laws are being applied according to the written law.

> Now that's okay to a degree, but the question is: where does the buck stop?

With proper separation of powers and an independent justice system, like the one that judged Le Pen and found her guilty.

[hollerith]

You seem to have failed to see the thorniness of the problem maybe because in the current instance (Le Pen's ban by the French judiciary) you agree with the outcome.

[woopsn]

Probably impossible to separate Le Pen's disqualification from the situation in the U.S. It's the song of the day. I seem to recall some account arguing in 2020, nominally on their expertise as a lawyer, that the election result could not be determined except in the courtroom. If you asked in 2020, should lawyers be disgraced if not disbarred for attempting to nullify the election - answer from GOP would be no. When asked today, suddenly answer is yes.

[surgical_fire]

I agree only in the sense that K think that politicians should be punished for their wrongs.

I would only see thorniness is the courts refused to punish Le Pen out of fear of punishing a somewhat popular politician, as this would embolden others to act in ways to break the rules, and would undermine the independence of the court, which is a core tenet of a functioning democracy.

I think you only see thorniness here because you wanted Le Pen to keep doing her thing. See? it works both ways.

[aredox]

That's why we have nowadays Republics, with either written constitutions or fundamental legal texts like Habeas Corpus, not just pure democracies à la antique Athens.

The way out of your conundrum is to admit there is no "the People"; there is a collection of diverging, often incoherent trends, and no voting system is perfect (no voting system is even logical, as proven by Condorcet and Arrow[0])

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/arrows-impossibility-th...

[crazygringo]

I'm using modern terminology. There's no relevant distinction here:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/democracy-and-republ...

The fundamental democratic principle is the same.

And we measure the will of the people in elections, without having to worry about Arrow... it's procedural.

[aredox]

Arrow is not at all "procedural", the French know it well: the 1995 presidential election ended with a Chirac vs Le Pen (the patriarch) duel, even though Lionel Jospin was the favorite and would have beaten both if he had faced them off... A clear example of non-transitivity in elections.

[crazygringo]

That's my point, sorry if it wasn't clear. Non-transitivity is resolved procedurally. We can theorize about Arrow all we want; in the meantime we can write rules that actually do produce electoral results.

[aredox]

My point is that it wasn't resolved: Jospin was the favorite, but the French were forced to choose between two candidates the majority of them loathed. The rules were a failure.

(2002 election, not 1995 - my bad)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_French_presidential_elect...

[aredox]

Sorry, 2002 election.

[tpm]

Even Athens had ostracism, barring ostracised people from running for office.

[cauch]

The definition of democracy according to Ricœur is: > Est démocratique, une société qui se reconnaît divisée, c’est-à-dire traversée par des contradictions d’intérêt et qui se fixe comme modalité, d’associer à parts égales, chaque citoyen dans l’expression de ces contradictions, l’analyse de ces contradictions et la mise en délibération de ces contradictions, en vue d’arriver à un arbitrage.

In English, more-or-less: > A society is democratic if it acknowledge that it is divided, which means that it contains contradictory interests, and if it creates modality to analyse and debate these contradictions so that we can reach arbitration, with each citizen having an equal share in the debate.

I don't believe that a society is democratic if a majority of the people have decided something that is harmful or unfair to a minority without properly having debated if this decision is fair or not for the minority.

Because of that, no, it's not "whatever the majority decides". In a democracy, the will to guarantee justice and fairness is more important than "the people", and if they say "there is suspicion of fraud from this candidate but let's just close our eyes because we like this person or because it is profitable for us", this is clearly a behavior where they are not trying to reach a just and fair situation.

This is what distinguish democracy from ochlocracy.

And I don't understand how people can really defend that we should ignore the justice/fairness condition: what is the point of following "the people" when these people are not trying to be just and fair? How will it be a good society?