Farmers get a say in who the president is, too.

FILE – Staff members hold the certification of Electoral College votes from Tennessee during a joint session of the House and Senate to confirm Electoral College votes at the Capitol, early Jan 7, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

A conference this week had me traveling in Missouri. I landed at Kansas City and drove three hours through some beautiful farmland to Lake of the Ozarks. When I returned, I found waiting for me a book bearing the title, “Every Vote Equal – A State-Based Plan for Electing the President by Popular Vote.” (If you’re in this business, authors and their agents are always sending you books.)

A drive through Missouri farmland and a book on abolishing the Electoral College actually tie together. Work with me and I’ll explain how.

I arrived early Sunday morning to begin a drive that passed through countless farm communities. It seemed like they each had two things in common. One was a white-steepled church straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. And the other was a Donald Trump yard sign seemingly everywhere you looked.

And it hit me that, a.) these people work from dawn to dusk making sure that my family and I get enough to eat; and, b.) they pretty much all go to church on Sunday; and, c.) well-manicured white liberals who live on the coasts and who work in government, politics, media and entertainment look down their noses upon them.

When I got back to the office, I found this 1,216-page tome advocating the elimination of the Electoral College.

Each time the subject of abolishing the Electoral College comes up – which is to say every presidential election year – it reveals anew that many nominally well-educated Americans don’t fully grasp that our nation is a union of sovereign states. Thus, they can’t appreciate the fact that the citizens don’t elect the president, the states do.

When drafting our Constitution, the founders feared two things. First, was an overly powerful federal government. Almost every argument at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 was about giving the federal government the power to be effective without giving it so much power as to nullify the sovereignty of the states.

The other thing they feared was factionalism. They feared anything that could have the effect of pitting the states against each other. They were prescient enough to understand that for the nation to flourish, the bankers of Pennsylvania were going to need the farmers of the Carolinas.

Thus, they decided that for a candidate to be elected president, he would need more than majority popular support. He would need majority popular support in a majority of the states. To be president, you can’t just win votes. You have to win the country.

To bring this about, each state is represented by a slate of electors in the Electoral College. Early in our history, those electors were appointed by state legislatures. Today in all 50 states, electors are chosen by popular vote.

The founders were exceptionally farsighted in establishing the Electoral College. But for the Electoral College, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 margin of victory in California alone would have decided the election.

Where would that have left those farmers whose communities I passed in Missouri? The answer is, functionally disenfranchised – and likely a lot less interested in feeding us.