While the story is interesting in its own right, the summation is the business:

The objection that reform would mean that rural interests would be ignored is a canard. The change would require candidates to present positions that galvanized all Americans. This is the truer and more certain path of democracy.

A canard! The claim to evoke rural interests is often a canard. A specious one, at that. I, in fact, am going to take up that accusation as a day to day sort of turn of phrase: "That, sir, is a most specious canard." Like the continuing existence of the Electoral College itself. A specious canard and perhaps even a trumped-up one.