ELECTORAL COLLEGE PROTECTS AMERICA'S FOOD SUPPLY

Without The Electoral College US Presidents Would Be Chosen By Bullies

Nevada is about to sign onto the National Popular Vote Compact. The Democrats’ hatred for the Electoral College began in 2000 when George W. Bush beat Al Gore. Gore received half a million more votes than Bush, but lost the Electoral College by five votes. Extremely bad losers, the Democrats came up with this unconstitutional scheme to ignore the Electoral College without amending the constitution. Their goal is to have enough states* signed onto this contract to turn the 2028 presidential election into a constitutional crisis. This will be the subject of a future article. For now, let us revisit how and why we have the Electoral College.

AVOIDING THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY

America came together as a Union of States, not one big group of people. The founders realized that citizens of one state had different needs than citizens of another state.  They were especially concerned that the needs of states with small populations would be overpowered by the more populous states.  With majority rule, the minority, whoever it is at the time, would have no voice. The founders created the Electoral College to prevent tyranny of the majority.

The thirteen original colonies came together to form The United States of America.

Electing the president by a simple majority ensures that the president could, and probably would, ignore minority needs.  In 21^st Century America that would mean that rural & small town residents, who currently make up less than 20% of the population, would have no voice.  Only the voices of city-dwellers and suburbanites would be heard in selecting a president.

With majority rule, congresspeople representing metropolitan areas would enjoy more power and control than their colleagues who represent rural areas and small towns.  Senators from states with large metropolitan areas, such as New York and California, would likewise exert far more influence over legislation than other senators.  These congresspeople and senators would also have more influence over the president because he/she was elected by their constituents, not by Americans living in rural areas and small towns.  The needs and wants of rural & small town Americans vary considerably with those of metropolitan Americans.

2016 Presidential Election County By County. Note: no county in Oklahoma voted for Clinton, one in Kansas, one in Wyoming, two in Nebraska, two in North Dakota, three in Missouri.

In the 2016 presidential election 487 highly populated metropolitan counties voted for one candidate and 2,626 voted for the other candidate.  Without the Electoral College just a handful of counties, less than 16% of America’s landmass, would have chosen our president, completely ignoring the votes in the great majority of counties.**

IGNORE NEEDS OF FARMERS, DESTROY AMERICA’S FOOD SUPPLY

What would happen to farmers and other residents in rural communities if only those in metropolitan areas picked our president?  Would they lag further and further behind their city cousins, as little or no federal funding would come their way, as no legislation would be passed to benefit them? 

Let’s examine the past to see what the future might bring.

Three generations after city dwellers first got electricity rural & small town residents could only look on in envy.  Indeed, Manhattan first obtained electrical service in 1882.  At that time, energy companies were privately owned and saw little profit in extending their electrical lines to farms that were miles apart, nor to small towns hundreds of miles from a big city.  In 1936, only 10% of farms had electricity despite the fact that they needed it for food production.

Eventually, the federal government stepped in.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt first established the Rural Electrification Administration in 1935 (REA), via executive order.  When that proved insufficient, the US House & Senate passed and the president signed, the Rural Electrification Act of 1936. 

Roosevelt said: “The forward march to electric cooperatives has an even more profound significance in terms of our fight to preserve democracy.

FDR signs the REA.

The REA provided loans to rural electrical cooperatives so they could purchase power wholesale and string lines to farms, small towns and rural communities, giving them the benefits of electricity.  By 1950, 80% of rural America was electrified. Arrival of electricity on America’s farms mechanized the production of food. Backbreaking brawn was replaced by machines that ran on electricity. Just one example is irrigation.

Irrigating Farms Without Electricity:

When electricity arrived on the farms of America, land that had previously been non-productive due to lack of water began producing food, and food costs declined.

Irrigating Farms With Electricity:

America’s Midwest Region has long been called the “Breadbasket of the World” because it produces most the grains consumed by people all over the world.  Some experts believe that China will soon overtake America in production of food, and we will need to beg most of our food off of a communist country.  The Breadbasket of the World consists of North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Iowa and Missouri. Of these eight states, only three contain major metropolitan areas: Kansas, Minnesota & Missouri.

Added to these eight states are the meat producing states of Montana, Wyoming, Texas and others, all of which have vast expanses of land and low populations. The least populated regions produce the majority of America’s food.  Most of the counties in these states have fewer that seven people per square mile.

Under a “majority rule” system, would rural communities ever have their needs addressed again?  If not, how would that affect America’s food supply, which comes from rural America?  Would products grown and raised in rural communities decrease in quality and/or quantity?  Three generations into the future, will lifestyle differences between urban and rural Americans be as stark as they were in the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s and 1940s?  Would future advances in technology enjoyed by metropolitan Americans be denied to rural Americans because the House, Senate and White House don’t need to please rural America?

ONLY WITH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE CAN AMERICANS HOPE TO HAVE PRESIDENTS WHO CARE ABOUT ALL OF US, ALL OF US.

We all know why Democrats, only Democrats, want to destroy the Electoral College. They believe, without it, THEY will own the White House for all eternity. We need only to look at Biden’s hatred toward Republicans & Conservatives to learn how all future Democrat presidents, without the Electoral College, will view “the rest of America.”

HOW DID REPUBLICANS BECOME SEMI-FASCISTS?

*Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, New Mexico, Oregon and the District of Columbia have already become signatories of the National Popular Vote Compact.

**I am using the 2016 presidential election as the best example to explain the city/rural divide between voters. I could not use the 2020 presidential election because the voting “results” were statistically impossible and, thus, the county by county comparison is meaningless.