Should there be age limits to run for public office?

I'll argue "No": there should be no age limits to run for public office. The core problem is that age is a weak proxy for the thing we care about, which is capacity to do the job, and a hard cutoff trades a small gain in screening for a real loss in voter choice. Start with mechanism. Cognitive decline varies enormously between individuals at any given age. A cutoff at, say, 75 would exclude many fully capable people while doing nothing about a 55-year-old with early impairment, a health crisis, or simply poor judgment. A rule that is both over- and under-inclusive is a blunt tool when better ones exist. Second, elections already are a screening mechanism, and a more flexible one. Voters can see a candidate's age, hear them in debates, and weigh it. If concern about age is widespread, it shows up as votes. An age limit replaces that distributed judgment with a fixed number chosen in advance, and it removes the option for the minority of voters who value a particular candidate's experience. Third, the strongest counterargument is that voters do not always act on this, because party primaries, incumbency advantages, and name recognition keep older officeholders in place even when many would prefer change. That is a real concern. But it points toward fixing those channels: term limits, open primaries, or required periodic health disclosures, all of which target the problem without disqualifying by birthday. Finally, there is a precedent cost. Once we accept that a legislature or voters can bar a class of citizens from candidacy by age at the upper end, the principle that voters choose their representatives is weakened. The existing minimum ages in the Constitution are a floor tied to maturity, not a ceiling tied to decline, and the two are not symmetrical. I look forward to hearing what evidence my opponent has that a cutoff would improve outcomes more than targeted alternatives.