Forum STORABLE VOTES: GIVING VOICE TO MINORITY PREFERENCES WITHOUT SACRIFICING EFFICIENCY*

The principle of majority rule is the foundation ofdemocratic constitutions, but provides an imme-diate and fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of any government that the constitution empowers: the risk of excluding minority groups from representation. At least since Madison, Mill, and Tocqueville, political thinkers have argued that a necessary condition for the legitimacy of a democratic system is for no group with socially acceptable goals to be disenfranchised. In the history of constitutional law, ensuring fair repre-sentation to each group is seen as the crucial second step in the evolution of democratic institutions, after granting the franchise: once all individuals are guaran-teed the right to participate in the political process, the problem remains how to assign appropriate weights to each group’s political interest. The core of the difficul