Editing Concurrent majority (section)

==United States Constitution==
Even so, the widening of the franchise caused concern. The framers of the [[United States Constitution]], even while they reiterated that the people held national [[sovereignty]], worked to ensure that a simple majority of voters could not infringe upon the [[liberty]] of the rest of the people. One protection was [[separation of powers]], such as [[bicameralism]] in the [[United States Congress]] and the three branches of the national government: legislative, executive, and judicial.

Having two houses was intended to serve as a brake on popular movements that might threaten particular groups, with the [[United States House of Representatives]] representing the common people and the [[United States Senate]] defending the interests of the state governments. The House was to be elected by popular vote, and the Senate was to be chosen by state legislatures. The executive veto and the implied power of [[judicial review]], which was later made explicit by the [[Supreme Court of the United States]], created further obstacles to absolute majority rule; with the rise of the [[Warren Court]] in the 1960s and its establishment of a precedent of [[one man, one vote]], judicial review was used to strike down most of the obstacles to absolute majority rule by declaring such measures unconstitutional.

Furthermore, the [[Three-Fifths Compromise]], more familiarly known at the time as the "federal ratio," allowed slaves to count as three-fifths of free men for the purposes of representation and taxation.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title = The Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power|last = Wills|first = Garry|publisher = Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|year = 2005|pages = xv-14}}</ref> The compromise secured Southern votes for ratification of the Constitution and ensured disproportionate influence to Southerners for the first 50 years of the Constitution's history.<ref name=":0" />