Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America

by Ijeoma Oluo

Guinier was concerned with the impact that the concepts “one man one vote” and “winner take all” voting were having on the political representation of people of color. Unless minorities in an area were especially politically aligned with the majority in the population, they were never going to have elected representatives that actually represented their needs. If a candidate needed more than 50 percent of the votes to win, then it would almost never be a good idea for the candidate to prioritize the needs of a minority group when that group’s numbers would not give the candidate enough votes to achieve victory. In winner-take-all elections, an elected official can represent 51 percent of their electorate and not represent 49 percent of their electorate, and it would still be considered a representative democracy. Further, because there are often only two choices in systems of simple majority rule, each candidate is forced to establish positions as far away as possible from their opponent’s views on select hot-button issues to ensure that they don’t lose undecided voters to the other side.