November 27, 2000

Getting rid of the Electoral College, an idea being touted in the wake of one of the nation's most contentious national elections, might not be a good idea for people living in rural America. "I think it would be a catastrophe for rural voters, particularly for farmers," according to Hyde Murray, a retired Farm Bureau lobbyist and historian, who also had a distinguished career of more than 30 years in federal government.

"There are certain things that are woven into our Constitution that are the fabric of a republic as distinguished from a pure democracy," said Murray, in an article by AFBF broadcast services director Stewart Truelsen. Each state has two senators regardless of size. There also is a seniority system in Congress that allows representatives and senators from rural states to achieve positions of power in the legislative process. The third example is the Electoral College.

"The Electoral College gives the rural constituency in big states the leverage to affect an election, and if that is taken away by a popular vote provision, it will cause hardship for rural America," said Murray. The American Farm Bureau supports retention of the Electoral College, and opposes making the popular vote the sole determinant of presidential elections.

Murray points out that rural Americans wouldn't be the only ones to suffer from scrapping the Electoral College. Any minority group, ethnic or religious, or any third party would have less clout in a popular vote system of choosing the president.

James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution, had a thought about pure democracies in which the people rule directly and under which the president would be elected by a popular majority. Madison wrote, "Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention." Some might say we have reached that point now with the election of 2000. But the worst would be yet to come.

A system of electing the president by popular vote would lead to dominance by big city and big state politics. Millions of Americans living in small states or rural areas of large states would feel they don't count. "If we had a popular vote, the saying goes, who would ever go to North Dakota to campaign?" said Murray. The answer is no one.