Electing a Political Leader

[stryder]

I was a little intrigued about the Eligibility of certain "Candidates" currently running in the US. In the UK there tends to be a couple of eligibility clauses that can be called upon to remove or invalidated a candidate, for instance if a candidate is suggested to suffer a psychiatric condition that could effect their effective capacity it can be called into question, what can also be called into question is if a candidate has ever been convicted of a crime.

Looking at the straight forwards online information about US presidential eligibility it just seems to boil down to being US born, being the age of >35yrs and having lived in the country for the past 14 years. There doesn't seem to be any clauses in relationship to psychiatric state or criminal convictions.

This leads to the questions of Should it be something to look at over there? or would looking at such things undermine the freedoms and liberty's that American's take for granted?

[elte]

Thirty-five years old seems pretty young for President.  Looking at some other qualifications like criminal record seems like a good idea yet maybe the Founding Fathers were reluctant to add many because of their experiences with persecution in countries that one could almost say they or their ancestors were escaping rather than just emigrating from.  I could see Australia being extra sensitive to this topic because it was a former British penal colony.

[C C]

After this one, the Republican elite might wish they could go back to the days of having their establishment honchos pick the presidential candidate in a private conference room filled with cigar smoke. They never imagined any self-funding invader to be able to have the success at subverting their current preliminary process and capture the voters the way Trump has.

[Magical Realist]

Looking at the straight forwards online information about US presidential eligibility it just seems to boil down to being US born, being the age of >35yrs and having lived in the country for the past 14 years. There doesn't seem to be any clauses in relationship to psychiatric state or criminal convictions.

There is a naturally selective process of vetting candidates called campaigning which submits them to attacks from competing candidates and intense media scrutiny. I would imagine any information about mental illness or criminal convictions would quickly come out publically in this process. If tax records, number of divorces, smoking pot in the 60's, and weird cultish associations are fair game, I'm sure these details would also be used to disqualify the candidate.