The vote only measures the persuasive power of active minorities, not equal individual opinions

Evidence

But the fact is that it is not true, in any sense, that numbers decide everything, nor that the opinions of all electors are of “exactly” equal weight. Numbers, in this case too, are simply an instrumental value, giving a measure and a relation and nothing more. And what then is measured? What is measured is precisely the effectiveness, and the expansive and persuasive capacity, of the opinions of a few individuals, the active minorities, the elites, the avant-gardes, etc.—i.e. their rationality, historicity or concrete functionality. Which means it is untrue that all individual opinions have “exactly” equal weight. Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously “born” in each individual brain: they have had a centre of formation, of irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion—a group of men, or a single individual even, which has developed them and presented them in the political form of current reality. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 790

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core Gramsci mechanism: numbers measure the expansive capacity of elites/avant-gardes, not the spontaneous will of equal individuals — useful scaffolding for how consent is manufactured.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Islamophobia toolkit via the construction of consensus and manufactured public opinion (later elaborated in hegemony concept).