Lani Guinier, The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental
Fairness in Representative Democracy, Free Press, New York,
1994.

In the Foreword, Stephen L Carter writes about "(preserving)
a vision of America that almost nobody really believes in
but almost everybody desperately wants to.  In this vision,
we are united in a common enterprise and governed by common
consent.  (W)e are people of good will, aiming at a fairer,
more integrated society, which we will achieve through the
actions of our essentially fair institutions.  And the key
to this enterprise ... is voting.  ...  (T)he right to vote
is the most important and dramatic emblem of democratic
citizenship.  The social history of America could be written
as the saga of a slowly expanding franchise: to the
nonpropertied, to the freed slaves, to women, to those old
enough to fight.  When we vote, wrote the late Judith
Shklar, '(w)e are taking part in a serious and personally
significant ritual.'  Whether or not our side wins, the
ritual affirms our membership in America: 'The simple act of
voting is the ground upon which the edifice of elective
government rests ultimately.'" p xiii

(N)o right is more fundamental than the right to vote." 
p xiv

"That right signals, as Shklar would say, full formal
membership in the American polity, but it also means ... the
chance to force the nation to change.  In other words,
although the mere ability to vote counts for a great deal,
the power that voting brings matters as much or more -- at
least to people who have long been denied their chance at
self-governance.  ...  (A) group interest exists and ...
voting procedures cannot be called fair when that interest
always loses." p xiv

Guinier, in the opening essay, lists "the values of self-
government, fairness, deliberation, compromise, and
consensus that lie at the heart of the democratic ideal" 
(p 5) and states that "the right to vote by itself is
'preservative of all other rights.'" (p. 7)  She concludes,
"Justice Potter Stewart wrote in 1964 that our form of
representative self-government reflects 'the strongly felt
American tradition that the public interest is composed of
many diverse interests, (which) ... in the long run ... can
better be expressed by a medley of component voices than by
the majority's monolithic command.' ...  I hope we
rediscover the bold solution to the tyranny of The Majority,
which has always been more democracy, not less." p 20