{"id":592,"date":"2021-05-06T10:54:44","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T10:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/north-carolina\/articles\/building-democracy-2-0-majorities-minorities-and-innovation-in-electoral-design\/"},"modified":"2021-05-06T10:54:44","modified_gmt":"2021-05-06T10:54:44","slug":"aufbau-der-demokratie-2-0-mehrheiten-minderheiten-und-innovation-im-wahldesign","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/north-carolina\/de\/articles\/building-democracy-2-0-majorities-minorities-and-innovation-in-electoral-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Aufbau einer Demokratie 2.0: Mehrheiten, Minderheiten und Innovation in der Wahlgestaltung"},"template":"","class_list":["post-592","article","type-article","status-publish","hentry","article_type-blog-post"],"acf":{"details":{"summary":"This is part 11 in a multi-part series examining ways to build an inclusive democracy for the 21st century.","featured_image":null,"article_type":162,"authors":["{\"site_id\":\"68\",\"post_type\":\"person\",\"post_id\":555}"],"related_issues":[109,417],"related_work":false,"location":null},"sidebar":{"helper_enable_sidebar":false,"helper_media_contact":{"heading":"Media Contact","manually_enter_person":false,"person":null,"name":"","role":"","phone":"","email":""},"helper_links_downloads":{"heading":"Links & Downloads","links":null}},"page_layout":[{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_wysiwyg","_acfe_flexible_toggle":null,"component_wysiwyg":{"content":"Introduction<\/strong>\r\n\r\nOne nagging issue that has bedeviled political thinkers relates to the tension between majority and minority interests in a democracy.\u00a0 This debate has seen new life in recent years through a partisan lens.\u00a0 Democrats lament the fact that two out of the last three Republican presidents won with fewer popular votes than the Democratic candidate.\u00a0 Similarly, Democrats point to the U.S. Senate as an anti-majoritarian institution since each state has two senators whether its population is 580,000 (Wyoming) or 40 million (California).\u00a0 Calculations show states represented by Republicans have far smaller populations than those represented by Democrats.\u00a0 Even more contentious is the Senate filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes to bring closure to debate on a bill.\u00a0 Without such closure, a bill can never advance to become law.\u00a0 Once used rarely, the filibuster has evolved into a weapon by a minority over majority interests.\u00a0 The debate rages on.\r\n\r\nBut the tension over majority and minority rights is not so easy to resolve \u2013 at least not as easy as defaulting to a winner-take-all, majority principle.\u00a0 How we look at this tension in democracy often depends on each person\u2019s vantage point.\u00a0 Do we identify with the minority or majority interest?\u00a0 And sometimes the minority is a powerful group protecting an unjust system.\u00a0 Other times, a minority may be a group experiencing discriminatory or other harmful actions by a majority.\u00a0 Finally, minority interests come in a myriad of forms, including ideology, class, religion, social status and sexual preference to name a few.\u00a0 The diversity of minority interests can push any universal principle beyond our grasp.\r\n\r\nNevertheless, the tension between majority and minority interests in democracy merits serious attention.\u00a0 Given that one of democracy\u2019s central innovations and advantages over other forms of government relates to its ability to channel conflict in a productive way, political theorists have spent considerable energy on this issue. \u00a0John Adams coined the term \u201ctyranny of the majority\u201d when arguing against a unicameral legislature, but the concept has been applied more broadly to the abuse of a minority by a majority.\u00a0 The unfair treatment of minorities can erode trust, undermining the cooperation needed during the transition of power from one election to the next.\u00a0 It threatens to create a permanent group alienated from society, requiring resources to manage potential conflicts.\u00a0 At its most extreme, tension between a majority and a minority can destroy the union of a nation and lead to civil war.\r\n\r\nThis essay looks at how this tension relates to electoral design.\u00a0 It explores the work of John C. Calhoun, Thomas Hare and Lani Guinier, who all had very different motivations but also struggled over the conflict between majority and minority groups within a democracy.\u00a0 Each one saw how a winner-take-all electoral system can disadvantage the political power of minority groups.\u00a0 In general, they formulated two approaches: one reforming the structure of the electoral system to ensure a level playing field and the other encouraging more direct interventions in government.\u00a0 Ultimately, these theorists laid the foundation for a significant innovation in democracy by answering two fundamental questions: \u00a0Is it enough for individuals to express their views through the ballot or should groups have an equal chance at representation?\u00a0 If group interests do have relevancy, how can the design of the electoral system advance such interests without undermining majority rule?\r\n\r\nThe Madisonian Framework<\/strong>\r\n\r\nEssay Three described the Founding Fathers\u2019 view of conflict and the importance of managing it in a democracy.\u00a0 Madison articulated two mechanisms to prevent a triumphant majority from abusing minorities.\u00a0 The first mechanism was a system of checks and balances in government itself.\u00a0 The Constitution created co-equal branches of government and reserved most powers for the states.\u00a0 The very structure of government would mirror a diffuse society \u201cbroken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe second was his conception of representative democracy itself.\u00a0 In Federalist 10, he advocated for a large republic to ameliorate powerful factions.\u00a0 He noted, \u201cA republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, \u2026 promises the cure for [factions].\u201d\u00a0 He continued:\r\n

Extend the sphere and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength and to act in unison with each other.<\/p>\r\nMadison did place some limits on the extent of such sphere:\u00a0 \u201cBy enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representative too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests.\u201d\u00a0 But if the sphere is too small, \u201cyou render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects.\u201d\u00a0 In sum, Madison looked to an expansive republic, which captures a multitude of interests, as a brake against the potential abuse by majorities over minorities.\u00a0 Of course, the \u201cmany parts, interests, and classes of citizens\u201d comprised a small sliver of society at this time.\r\n\r\nJohn C. Calhoun:\u00a0 Protecting a Vile Institution <\/strong>\r\n\r\nIn one of the great ironies of political thought, a champion of slavery, John C. Calhoun, charted a new theory about how democracies can protect minority interests.\u00a0 His writing on this topic caused other political theorists to explore alternatives to the winner-take-all voting systems ultimately producing variants of proportional voting.\u00a0 Calhoun rose quickly to political prominence.\u00a0 Born to a slave-owning family in South Carolina, he attended Yale and graduated valedictorian in 1804.\u00a0 Despite Calhoun\u2019s early support for a strong national government, he gravitated towards states\u2019 rights as the economic foundations of the North and South diverged \u2013 one based on emerging industries and the other based on the labor of enslaved people.\r\n\r\nCalhoun served as vice president under both President John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.\u00a0 Calhoun\u2019s tense relationship with Jackson worsened toward the end of Jackson\u2019s first term over the issue of tariffs.\u00a0 New England states pressed to raise tariffs against imports from Europe to protect fledgling industries in the North.\u00a0 However, Southern states, and their slave-based economies, depended on strong exports to Europe.\u00a0 After passage of the Tariff of 1828, Calhoun anonymously wrote \u201cSouth Carolina Exposition and Protest.\u201d\u00a0 In it, he argued that any state could nullify federal laws that went beyond the enumerated powers in the Constitution.\u00a0 After passage of the Tariff of 1832, Jackson threated to hang Calhoun and anyone else who endorsed nullification. In response, Calhoun resigned and ran for an open senate seat in South Carolina, beginning a long career in the U.S. Senate.\r\n\r\nAs Calhoun advanced in age, he increasingly focused his mind on preserving the vile institution of slavery and the powerful minority group that depended on it.\u00a0 To further this goal, he devised his theory of nullification and an early form of the Senate filibuster rule.\u00a0 Calhoun set forth his most elaborate thoughts in A Disquisition on Government<\/u> completed at the end of his career and published after his death.\u00a0 In it, Calhoun articulated the idea of the \u201cconcurrent majority,\u201d which had a major impact on political theory.\u00a0 In contrast to Madison, Calhoun lacked faith in the ability of a republic to manage the excesses of majorities.\u00a0 He wrote, \u201cgovernment, although intended to protect and preserve society, has itself a strong tendency to disorder and abuse of its powers\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 The source of this tendency stems from our selfish nature:\u00a0 \u201cthe individual [feelings] are stronger than the social feelings.\u201d\u00a0 Therefore, any power vested in those serving in government, \u201cwill, if left unguarded, be by them converted into instruments to oppress the rest of the community.\u201d\r\n\r\nA central part of Calhoun\u2019s thesis relates to his distinction between a \u201cnumerical majority\u201d and a \u201cconstitutional majority.\u201d\u00a0 The former refers to the existing winner-take-all voting system that simply looks at the numerical output of voting within \u201cthe whole community as a unit having but one common interest throughout.\u201d\u00a0 He exposes a flaw in this system because it treats the majority in an election as reflecting all interests in society.\u00a0 He writes:\u00a0 \u201cthe numerical majority, instead of being the people, is only a portion of them.\u00a0 [S]uch a government, instead of being a true and perfect model of the people\u2019s government, that is, a people self-governed, is but the government of a part over a part \u2013 the major over the minor portion.\u201d\u00a0 Predating Duverger by a century, Calhoun understands how a winner-take-all system can cause polarization or negative partisanship:\r\n

It is not wonderful then that a form of government which periodically stakes all its honors and emoluments as prizes to be contended for should divide the community into two great hostile parties; or that party attachments, in the progress of the strife, should become so strong among the members of each respectively as to absorb almost every feeling of our nature, both social and individual; or that their mutual antipathies should be carried to such an excess as to destroy, almost entirely, all sympathy between them and to substitute in its place the strongest aversion.<\/p>\r\nIn such a system, \u201cdevotion to party becomes stronger than devotion to country.\u201d\r\n\r\nIn contrast to a numerical majority, Calhoun describes a \u201cconstitutional majority\u201d that considers \u201cthe community as made up of different and conflicting interests.\u201d\u00a0 A constitutional majority is one that has the restraint necessary to protect minority interests.\u00a0 The mechanism to accomplish such restraint is the \u201cconcurrent majority:\u201d\r\n

There is, again, but one mode in which [the concurrent majority] can be effected, and that is by taking the sense of each interest or portion of the community which may be unequally and injuriously affected by the action of the government separately, through its own majority or in some other way by which its voice may be fairly expressed, and to require the consent of each interest either to put or to keep the government in action.\u00a0 [This can be accomplished] by dividing and distributing the powers of government, give to each division or interest, through its appropriate organ, either a concurrent voice in making and executing the laws or a veto on their execution<\/u>.\u00a0 (emphasis added)<\/p>\r\nIn this passage, Calhoun identifies two very different approaches to produce a concurrent majority:\u00a0 one giving minorities a seat at the table and the other according them a veto power over majority decisions.\u00a0 These two prescriptions become a recurrent theme when discussing minority rights in a democracy.\u00a0 Unlike a numerical majority, this alternative system generates harmony according to Calhoun.\u00a0 \u201cBy giving to each interest, or portion, the power of self-protection, all strife and struggle between them for ascendency is prevented.\u201d\u00a0 Since the threat of tyranny from a winner-take-all system is removed, \u201ceach sees and feels that it can best promote its own prosperity by conciliating the good will and promoting the prosperity of the others.\u201d\r\n\r\nCalhoun did not offer specific reforms to achieve his vision.\u00a0 His notion of a veto on majority rule was a blatant effort to protect Southern interests.\u00a0 However, his description of a system that can identify \u201cthe different interests, portions, or classes of the community\u201d marked a step toward proportional voting.\u00a0 A voting system that can \u201ccollect the sense of the community\u201d so that \u201cevery individual of every interest might trust, with confidence, its majority or appropriate organ against that of every other interest\u201d describes an important aspect of the proportional system.\u00a0 Voters with common interests can find their own majority by joining together.\r\n\r\nCalhoun predicted a civil war more than a decade before its outbreak.\u00a0 Slavery increasingly split the U.S. into a growing majority of citizens who wanted it banned and a minority who would never accede.\u00a0 Such a collision course subverted the ideal espoused by Madison where majority and minority interests can coexist in an ever-changing society.\u00a0 Slavery was too powerful a dividing line to permit such resolution.\u00a0 Calhoun devised a range of creative ideas to support the continuation of an abhorrent institution.\u00a0 His theory of a concurrent majority offered a way democracy could possibly avoid the looming conflict \u2013 by giving a slave-owning minority veto power over the central issue of that time.\u00a0 Several years later, Lincoln prophetically issued his rebuttal:\u00a0 \u201cA House divided against itself cannot stand\u2026.\u00a0 It will become all one thing or all the other.\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes the division separating a majority from a minority is so deep and the cause so just that resolution rests on acceptance of the majority\u2019s position or else war.\r\n\r\nThomas Hare:\u00a0 Providing An Equal Voice for Minorities<\/strong>\r\n\r\nA Disquisition on Government<\/u> had a powerful influence on political thinkers at a time when other democracies were seeking to establish strong representative governments.\u00a0 One of those paying close attention to Calhoun was political theorist Thomas Hare.\u00a0 Hare was admitted as a student to the Inner Temple in 1833 and practiced in the chancery courts.\u00a0 As a member of the Conservative Party, Hare was elected to British Parliament but resigned in 1846.\u00a0 He joined a group that splintered from the Conservatives known as the Peelites after Robert Peel.\u00a0 Peelites favored free trade over protectionism.\u00a0 Hare refused to join the Liberal Party, preferring to remain independent.\u00a0 He devoted the remainder of his life to electoral reform.\r\n\r\nAs relayed in the last essay, Hare is the father of proportional voting. \u00a0He wrote his influential Treatise on the Election of Representatives, Parliamentary and Municipal<\/u> less than a decade after A Disquisition on Government<\/u>.\u00a0 This book reflected on the experience from the 1832 Reform Act, which significantly overhauled the districts or \u201cboroughs\u201d which elected members to Parliament.\u00a0 Calhoun\u2019s distinction between a numerical and constitutional majority helped Hare to see the shortcomings of these earlier reforms.\u00a0 Hare acknowledged a debt to Calhoun who \u201cemployed his latest hours and his most elaborate efforts, in a work designed as a warning against the dangers of that absolutism which would result from committing the destinies of the country to the uncontrolled government of the numerical majority.\u201d\u00a0 However, unlike Calhoun, Hare was not motivated by a desire to protect an entrenched and powerful minority interest from a majority adverse to it.\r\n\r\nInstead, Hare envisioned how representative democracy could treat all interests more equally and reflective of the population.\u00a0 Consequently, Hare took Calhoun\u2019s distinction between a numerical majority and constitutional majority in a different direction. This was a time when many political leaders in Britain saw a need to reform Parliamentary elections due to the wide disparities among districts.\u00a0 Some reformers advocated a more equal division of electors in geographic districts.\u00a0 Hare had a different perspective.\u00a0 He was troubled by the fact that a numerical majority in each district could extinguish widespread, legitimate community interests dispersed among multiple districts such that \u201cdetached minorities \u2026 have no means of meeting their adversaries in the representative council\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 Hare knew there would be resistance to giving minorities a voice, but the unfairness of the winner-take-all system propelled him:\r\n

Those who, in this country, or who in establishing representative institutions in the colonies, have advocated the policy of conferring on minorities some power of securing, at least, a partial representation, have been stigmatized as unsound reformers, \u2013 as enemies to the sovereign will of the majority.\u00a0 The majority which is meant is not the true, and, as it is termed by Mr. Calhoun, the concurrent and constitutional majority of the nation, \u2013 the result of a free and comprehensive organization of all interests, and all opinions, but the majority of mere numbers, at whose shrine all interests, and all opinions, are to be immolated.<\/p>\r\nWith the framework of a numerical and constitutional majority in mind, Hare set to work on a new system of voting \u2013 one that could advance the equality of all interests in a representative democracy.\u00a0 But rather than protecting minorities with a veto power in government, Hare focused on giving minorities a voice in representative democracy.\u00a0 He argues that geographically-based districts \u2013 even ones that follow city and county boundaries \u2013 cannot adequately represent the interests of voters:\u00a0 \u201cThere is, however, no such indissoluble bond uniting together the dwellers in every borough.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThe people of this country have always evinced great reluctance to be arbitrarily parceled out ... like a chessboard.\u201d\u00a0 On the contrary, a voter \u201cis not precluded from choosing his friends or associates beyond the boundaries of his own borough; and there does not seem to be any sound reason why he should not be allowed, with a like freedom, to seek elsewhere his fellow constituents.\u201d\r\n\r\nHare realized the unfairness minorities face when forever trapped in a district unreflective of their views.\u00a0 To liberate voters from such a geographic trap, Hare devised the single transferable vote.\u00a0 This voting system lowers the threshold needed to win seats and expands the universe of voters with multi-member districts, making it easier for minorities to gain a voice in Parliament.\u00a0 \u00a0This system treats all interests fairly.\u00a0 No group has a guarantee of representation.\u00a0 If \u201can elector be unable to find any constituency with whom he can concur, it must be owing to the singularity or eccentricity of his political views, and the unrepresentative minority is reduced to the smallest limits\u2026.\u201d\r\n\r\nLike Madison, Hare had faith in democracy.\u00a0 He believed conflict could be managed through the electoral system if diverse interests, including minority groups, operated on a level playing field.\u00a0 \u201cNumerical majorities\u201d in a geographic district cannot fairly reflect the range of views in society, which are distributed unevenly across districts.\u00a0 By eliminating the ability of politicians to \u201cexhaust themselves in ingenious contrivances to parcel the electors into such divisions that some may neutralize others,\u201d Hare redefined the concept of representation.\u00a0 Hare created a voting system that, as suggested by Calhoun, could take \u201cthe sense of each interest or portion of the community\u201d and thereby allow minority interests to gain influence when they are freed from a small district and can coalesce with sympathetic voters across a larger area.\u00a0 Not only did this new system give minorities a voice, it gives every voter a sense of power \u2013 \u201cto see and feel that he is personally responsible for what he does.\u201d\r\n\r\nLani Guinier:\u00a0 Advancing Civil Rights<\/strong>\r\n\r\nA civil rights scholar and the first woman of color appointed to a tenured professorship at Harvard Law School, Lani Guinier has advanced new theories relating to minorities and majorities in a democracy.\u00a0 As a child, Guinier set her sights on a career in civil rights after watching the news as James Meredith was escorted into the University of Mississippi as its first Black student.\u00a0 After graduating from Yale Law School in 1981, Guinier joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.\u00a0 Guinier quickly established herself both as an attorney in the courtroom and as a scholar in the classroom.\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, many know her as an early casualty of the culture wars when an outcry from different quarters caused President Clinton to withdraw her nomination as assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division.\u00a0 The media often mischaracterized her ideas.\u00a0 She endured racist and dismissive comments as a \u201cquota queen\u201d \u2013 a thinly veiled reference to Reagan\u2019s pejorative term for welfare recipients. After that painful experience, Guinier compiled much of her work in The Tyranny of the Majority:\u00a0 Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy<\/u>.\u00a0 In it, she includes several of her law review articles and provides context to the remedies she pioneered.\r\n\r\nThese writings reflect the fact that Guinier began her career at a time of significant backlash against the Voting Rights Act.\u00a0 No longer able to use literacy tests, poll taxes and other tools to prevent voter registration, white politicians looked to erect new barriers to Black political power.\u00a0 The winner-take-all voting system provided a useful tool to accomplish that.\u00a0 A key tactic of officials was to draw districts in a way to dilute Black voting power.\u00a0 For example, governments switched from district seats to at-large seats.\u00a0 Local districts where Blacks comprised a majority of voters were replaced by at-large districts where whites made up over 50% of the voters.\u00a0 This permitted white candidates to win every single seat.\u00a0 These tactics led to an amendment of the Voting Rights Act in 1982.\u00a0 Lawmakers extended its reach beyond voter registration to cover \u201cqualitative vote dilution.\u201d\u00a0 Now courts could consider ways to provide Blacks a realistic opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.\r\n\r\nAs Guinier searched for legal tools to counter tactics by white officials, she arrived at the source of the problem:\r\n

This history of struggle against tyrannical majorities enlightens us to the dangers of winner-take-all collective decision-making.\u00a0 Majority rule, which presents an efficient opportunity for determining the public good, suffers when it is not constrained by the need to bargain with minority interests.\u00a0 When majorities are fixed, the minority lacks any mechanism for holding the majority to account or even to listen.\u00a0 Nor does such majority rule promote deliberation or consensus.\u00a0 The permanent majority simply has its way, without reaching out to or convincing anyone else.<\/p>\r\nThis passage suggests that minority and majority status can be \u201cfixed\u201d and \u201cpermanent.\u201d\u00a0 Such a view leads Guinier toward the concept of concurrent majorities espoused by Calhoun.\u00a0 However, instead of giving minorities veto power in government, she suggests that governmental action may, in certain cases, require a super-majority vote.\u00a0 The media and lawmakers attacked Guinier for this view.\u00a0 They missed the fact that she saw it as a court-mandated remedy in extreme situations.\u00a0 In fact, the Reagan Administration imposed supermajority voting on the City of Mobile where white elected officials had a simple majority lock on decision making.\u00a0 By requiring a supermajority vote, Black representatives could have a voice in governmental decisions.\r\n\r\nIn another essay, \u201cGroups, Representation, and Race Conscious Districting,\u201d Guinier turns her attention toward the electoral system similar to Thomas Hare.\u00a0 She wrote this piece at a time when state legislatures were drawing minority majority districts such as North Carolina\u2019s infamous 12th<\/sup> Congressional District that ambled along Highway 85 held by Rep. Mel Watt.\u00a0 These majority minority districts were well intentioned -- designed to help ensure Black representation.\u00a0 However, Guinier exposes the trouble with addressing racial inequity through single member districts.\r\n\r\nShe points out the manifold invalid assumptions with this approach: \u00a0Just because the district has a Black representative does not mean other groups in the district are adequately represented.\u00a0 Also, just because this district has a Black representative does not mean that person can adequately represent Blacks in all the other majority white districts in the state.\u00a0 Finally, just because the district has a Black representative does not mean any intra- and inter-minority conflicts within the district are resolved.\u00a0 She writes, \u201crace-conscious districting incorporates a static, somewhat monolithic, view of representation that, after the initial drawing of a majority minority district, diminishes the subsequent importance of broad authority from a consenting group of participants\u2026. [R]ace-conscious districting arbitrarily reduces voters to their ethnic or racial identity and then only represents that characteristic in a way that isolates or balkanizes the population.\u201d\r\n\r\nGuinier then turns to the source of the problem.\u00a0 \u201cBut the real complaint is not with the race consciousness of the districting, but with the districting process itself.\u201d\u00a0 As an antidote, Guinier looks to proportional voting:\u00a0 \u201cEverybody\u2019s vote should count for somebody\u2019s election.\u00a0 Voters are directly represented only if they actively choose who represents their interests.\u201d\u00a0 By freeing voters from the constraints of a geographic district designed for a particular race, \u201c[proportional voting] gives voters the opportunity to associate with the identity that fits their own view of psychological, cultural, and historical reality.\u201d\r\n\r\nGuinier notes all of the benefits that come with proportional systems.\u00a0 Voter participation increases as wasted votes decrease.\u00a0 More diverse, interest-based political coalitions allow for a deeper and more robust discourse.\u00a0 Giving minority groups a voice in government affords these interests legitimacy and the potential to participate in coalition governments.\u00a0 She weighs the potential for paralysis that could come with proportional systems against the alienation associated with a winner-take-all one and concludes, \u201cthat exclusiveness is a greater evil than controversy, that passivity does not equal contentment, and that differences need not be permanently enshrined in the electoral configuration.\u201d\u00a0 She concludes that \u201cBy directly confronting the problem of wasted voting [in a majority system], we may make the system more legitimate from the perspective of previously disenfranchised groups and more fairly representative of issue-based groups who previously have been aggregated and silenced within the majority.\u201d\r\n\r\nAs a civil rights attorney, Guinier focuses on legal responses to specific violations of statute.\u00a0 She understands a majority voting system can be easily weaponized to hurt minorities.\u00a0 But she does not set out to reform the entire electoral system.\u00a0 She is looking for a judicial remedy and suggests a proportional system known as cumulative voting.\u00a0 Used most commonly by corporations for the election of board members, this system gives voters a number of votes to use as they choose multiple seats.\u00a0 They can use all votes to support a particular candidate or spread them evenly across multiple candidates.\u00a0 This system has not been employed widely by electoral designers, and it has shortcomings as a voting system.\u00a0 Most importantly, voters have no way of knowing how many votes are required to gain a seat and may waste votes unnecessarily in the hope of seeing a minority candidate win.\u00a0 Regardless, this system guarantees no group a quota.\u00a0 In fact, it requires parties to organize and compete for seats on an equal basis in contrast to a winner-take-all system where the outcome of an election can be predetermined by the drawing of district lines.\u00a0 Guinier dared to advance ideas that challenged convention and paid a price.\u00a0 In light of the current threats to democracy, her thinking deserves careful consideration.\r\n\r\nConclusion<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThe threat posed to minorities by an over-zealous majority has captured the attention of political theorists since the founding of this nation.\u00a0 The motivations of these theorists have been vastly different \u2013 protecting a powerful minority group resisting social change, providing a way for minorities to have an equal voice in government, and advancing the civil rights of a disenfranchised group.\u00a0 Despite these divergent motivations, political thinkers have identified the winner-take-all voting system as the primary means for suppressing minority interests unfairly, and at time recklessly.\u00a0 In response to this threat, two strategies emerged to protect minority interests.\u00a0 One strategy \u2013 giving minorities a mechanism in government such as a veto over majority decisions \u2013 turned out to be a dead end.\u00a0 While the U.S. Senate continues to hold onto the filibuster as a way to enhance the power of a minority, such devices do not help ameliorate conflicts between majorities and minorities but can worsen them due to the potential for abuse, particularly when operating within a polarized environment spawned by a winner-take-all system.\r\n\r\nThe other strategy \u2013 proportional voting \u2013 has proven a more effective way to manage the tension between minority and majority interests.\u00a0 It does not artificially inflate the power of minorities to block the majority.\u00a0 It treats all voters equally but provides a way for minorities to get a seat at the table in government. \u00a0By giving minority groups a voice in government, minorities and majorities can interact and at times form coalitions on issues.\u00a0 The majority, however, ultimately rules, avoiding gridlock.\u00a0 For these reasons, proportional voting marked an advancement in electoral design.\u00a0\u00a0 It strengthens the two key innovations associated with democracy.\u00a0 It helps channel conflict in a productive direction by permitting minorities to \u201c[meet] their adversaries in the representative council.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 It also more accurately reveals the collective mind of voters by freeing minority interests from the distortions created by limited geographic districts and showing the level of support for minority interests over a much larger area.\u00a0 In sum, one of the great innovations in representative self-government arose from creative efforts to find an appropriate balance between minority interests and government based on majority rule.\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nMack Paul is a member of the state advisory board of Common Cause NC and a founding partner of Morningstar Law Group.<\/em>\r\n\r\nParts in this series:\r\n\r\nIntroduction: Building Democracy 2.0<\/a>\r\n\r\nPart 1: What Is Democracy and Why Is It Important?<\/a>\r\n\r\nPart 2: How the Idea of Freedom Makes the First Innovation Possible<\/a>\r\n\r\nPart 3: The Second Innovation that Gave Rise to Modern Democracy<\/a>\r\n\r\nPart 4: The Rise and Function of Political Parties \u2013 Setting the Record Straight<\/a>\r\n\r\nPart 5: How Political Parties Turned Conflict into a Productive Force<\/a>\r\n\r\nPart 6: Parties and the Challenge of Voter Engagement<\/a>\r\n\r\nPart 7: The Progressive Movement and the Decline of Parties in America<\/a>\r\n\r\nPart 8: Rousseau and \u2018the Will of the People\u2019<\/a>\r\n\r\nPart 9: The Dark Secret of Majority\u00a0Voting<\/a>\r\n\r\nPart 10: The Promise of Proportional\u00a0Voting<\/a>\r\n\r\nPart 11: Majorities, Minorities and Innovation in Electoral\u00a0Design<\/a>\r\n\r\nPart 12: The Misdirected Attempts at Electoral Reform in\u00a0the\u00a0U.S.<\/a>\r\n\r\nPart 13: Building Democracy 2.0: The Uses and Abuses of Redistricting in American Democracy<\/a>"}}]},"yoast_head":"\nBuilding Democracy 2.0: Majorities, Minorities and Innovation in Electoral Design - 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