Questions about the voting system in USA

[Chaerophon]

Nope, black-letter modern democratic theory. The idea is that minority groups such as, for instance, the black population in America, ought to have the same rights as do the majority in the federation. On theoretical grounds, thanks go out to J.S. Mill, Madison, et al. They helped build this notion right into the American system of governance. Today it is widely held that government should be instituted so as to protect minority opinion in the face of majority consensus. Your American federalist system, your separation of executive and legislative powers and your powers of judicial review were all intended from the outset to protect the individual from the weight of majority opinion. Makes sense to me; the majority aren't having too many problems where I come from :) Here's a pretentious quote from the Federalist Papers:

"...whilst all authority in [a federal republic] will be derived from and dependent on society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens that the rights of individuals, of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority."

Another one from some other guy:

"The American federation was conceived as a democracy that was refined and filtered through an artful maze of governmental institutions so designed as to powerfully discourage the formation and expression of a general or majority will."

A lot of this fear of majoritarianism stemmed from the excesses of the "liberty" exhibited over the course of the French Revolution in which thousands were executed as an exercise of the "general will"; unfortunately, this was nothing more than Rousseau's benevolent notion of popular sovereignty perverted into rampant majoritarianism. A sort of "legitimate" tyranny you could say. Of course, Madison came before most of that; a visionary in that sense, I suppose.

Anyways, the entire history of the United States has been shaped by this notion of protection of the individual against a "tyranny of the majority". Of course, there have been many debates about exactly who an individual is (ie. black slaves weren't included in many people's opinions), but the ideas have always been there.