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Originally Posted by oldschoolcalgary
Except, when this happens in private industry you know what happens?
you get fired.
Government has no mechanism for that after the election results are validated.
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If it's egregious and you are incapable of doing the job, sure. If the qualification you lied about is a legal requirement, you can expect to be fired and sued. But I would also suspect that plenty of people lie, and go on without incident if the lie has not impacted their ability to do the work, perhaps even if the lie gets discovered.
Now politics is different because your only performance evaluation is the next election. Everyone elected is axiomatically considered competent, so there is no mechanism to separate "lie affecting competence" from "lie not affecting competence". You're right that notwithstanding censure and recall legislation you can't fire an elected official. That's just the nature of government, it's how the system works. Calgary can't even fire Sean Chu, because people keep voting for him. That's democracy for you.
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Originally Posted by oldschoolcalgary
Again what's the problem here? this cuts both ways. If a democrat got elected into office through lying about their bona fides would some posters still be equally reticent about passing legislation?
somehow I doubt it.
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Just don't put me in that group. My concerns are around safeguarding democracy, not about protecting the party that seems to have more pathological liars.
I think it should be up to electors, not legislators, what is disqualifying and what isn't. Yet, I recognize that electors need the truth to do that. I'm not saying the idea is fundamentally bad, just that it's something that is dangerous and if it is to be written, needs to be written with extreme caution. It's not a slam-dunk nor is it low-hanging fruit.
Disqualifying your opponents tends to be a feature of states that we wouldn't usually associate with strong democracy. Even normalizing the concept of disqualification could push the USA closer to a dark path at a time when it's already struggling to uphold its institutions.