A Rural Voter Doesn’t Deserve & Shouldn’t Have More Political Power Than An Urban Voter
The universal principle of democracies is “one person, one vote” not “one square mile, one vote”
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
As a general rule, should minorities that are often outvoted by larger interest groups be allowed to cast extra ballots to balance things out?
Some rural people think it is unfair that they are regularly outvoted by urban residents, and they complain that each rural voter deserves to have more political power than each urban voter.
Expanding this “rural people deserve more political power per person than urban people” idea to other minorities:
- Should racial minorities be given greater political power to offset their smaller numbers?
- Should religious minorities, Muslims, fundamentalist Christians, Jews and atheists each be given extra political power in order to offset their smaller numbers?
- There are about 50 million Americans in the ages 19 through 29 while there are about 196 million Americans over age 29.
>>Since voters in the ages of 19 to 29 have the most years of life ahead of >>them and, on average, have very different values, goals, political and >>social philosophies than people over 64, should we give young people >>extra political power?
- Because people over 65 have (1) greater experience; (2) perhaps more wisdom; (3) fewer years of life left, and (4) very different political and social philosophies, do they deserve to have more political power than young voters?
- Rich people have very different political philosophies than poor people; they pay more taxes than poor people, and having more money, they have more at stake. What about giving more electoral power to the minority of rich people?
These are rhetorical questions, of course.
I think most Americans are in agreement that regardless of which minorities (racial, religious, financial, geographical, age, etc.) they belong to, each American should have the same say in choosing their government, namely “one person, one vote.”
Rural Americans Want To Allocate Political Power By Acreage Instead Of Per Person
Why then do many rural Americans think that they deserve more political power than their numbers entitle them to?
They express their demand for disproportionate political power with the argument:
“Why should one or two densely populated areas speak for the whole of the nation?”
Land Doesn’t Vote
Of course, the question itself is a fraud, a cheat. It’s is written in a devious way in a deliberate attempt to present a distorted picture of reality.
When you read it carefully you realize that the question is really asking:
“Why should a few acres of land speak for all the acres of land in the nation?”
The First Cheat
The first cheat in the question is the implication that acres of land speak, that is vote, when land doesn’t vote at all. Only humans vote.
The Second Cheat
The second cheat is the implication that a small number of acres are wrongly overriding the will of all the rest of the acres in the nation. Land is an inanimate object and the acres in the nation have no political opinions, will, intellect or desires whatsoever.
The people in the nation choose the government, not the land they live on.
Voting By Square Mile Instead Of By Person
The thrust of the rural people’s position is that in order to benefit themselves, political power should be allocated on the basis of acreage rather than population; that people should have political power on a county-by-county basis no matter how few or how many people live in a county.
If you allocate political power in proportion to land rather than by population then you’re saying that the foundation principle of your government is that political power derives from and is exercised for the benefit of the number of acres of land in each jurisdiction, not that it derives from and is exercised for the benefit of the number of people who live on the land in each jurisdiction.
Democracies don’t operate for the benefit of the dirt within the country’s borders, but rather for the benefit of the people within its borders.
The farmers want to change the government so that land counts instead of people. They want the 10 city acres of County A where a million people live to have the same political power as the 10 rural acres of County B where 1,000 people live, thus giving each person living in County B 1,000 times more political power than each person living in County A.
But, here’s the thing. The acres in County A and the acres in County B don’t vote at all.
The million people who live in County A cast 1,000,000 votes and the 1,000 people who live in County B cast 1,000 votes because democracies are run on the basis of one vote for each adult citizen irrespective of where they live or how many acres of land their city or county occupies.
[***Go to the end of the column for an example of how you could allocate political power based on acreage and how ridiculous that system would be.]
U.S. Senate
America was originally made up of various states that were in competition with each other. Prior to the adoption of the Constitution, people considered themselves citizens of their state more than citizens of the country as a whole.
The framers of the Constitution were extremely interested in preserving the political power of their individual states and for that reason they created a federal government with one legislative body whose representatives were elected based on population and a second body, the Senate whose representatives were elected state by state, designed to protect the power of each of the states .
This anti-democratic allocation of political power to the Senate was the unique result of the delegates’ intense loyalty to and desire to protect the power of their individual states, not as general principle of how all democratic governments should be designed.
Gov’ts Operate To Benefit People, Not To Benefit Inanimate Objects
Of course, it’s not the job of a government to make life better for inanimate objects like cars, toaster ovens, or land.
Inanimate objects have no will, no desires, no intellect, and no rights. They aren’t constituents of the government nor is benefitting them the goal of the government’s exercise of power.
We don’t allocate political power based on how many automobiles there are in a state, how many oil wells there are in a state, or how many acres there are in a state.
With the exception of the U.S. Senate, we allocate political power based on how many people there are in a state because people have intelligence, desires, and opinions while inanimate objects do not.
Honestly Restating The Rural Advocate’s Original Question
If we rephrase the rural advocate’s original question to eliminate the fake implications that small areas of land unfairly override the will of large areas of land, it becomes:
“Why should the tens of millions of people who live in one or two densely populated areas and constitute seventy percent of the state’s entire population elect a majority of the representatives in the legislature that represents the entire state?”
The answer is:
Because democracies operate for the benefit of human beings not for the benefit of dirt, and the government is chosen by the majority of its human citizens based on the principle of one person, one vote, not one acre, one vote.
No Minorities, Including Farmers, Deserve Extra Political Power Beyond One Person, One Vote
Just because farmers are a minority of the population doesn’t mean that they deserve to have disproportionate political power any more than any other minority — black people, religious people, young people, or rich people — deserve to have far greater political power than their numbers entitle them to.
Nobody does.
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
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***Allocating Voting Based On Acreage
There are 2.43 billion acres in the United States. If you were going to allocate political power based on acreage then you could divide the country into 10 acre plots with each plot having one vote cast according to the majority vote of the humans occupying those 10 acres.
So, one person who lived on a 40 acre farm he would get 4 votes. Another family of four adults that lived on a 400 acre ranch would get ten votes each. A city of 100,000 people that occupied 10 acres of land would get one single vote.
Ridiculous.
