It was an act that, radical or not, put them in the vanguard of a ballot-casting experiment called cumulative voting, one of a brace of methods hailed by some as the future of suffrage but labeled antidemocratic by no less an authority than Bill Clinton. Traditionally Americans are uneager to tinker under the hood of the voting machine. Combined with related court cases, the revision compels areas with histories of discrimination to create voting districts where minorities can get elected. Almost invariably this was read as a call to carve out geographic districts where blacks, Hispanics or Native Americans were the majority. The solution is imperfect.
Some scholars object outright to any government engineering of racial advantage.
Other critics note that whites in the newly created districts become a new voiceless minority. A third group grimaces at the gerrymanders spawned when districters create land bridges between geographically dispersed minority members. Nonetheless, the districts were generally accepted as a necessary evil. Their critics from the right risked portrayal as troglodytes. Within weeks of her nomination's withdrawal, however, Guinier found an unlikely ally.