First of all, the word is usually described as meaning "the rule of the people". But there is no such thing as the people. There are lots of individual people, who disagree with each other. If you want to have something you can pass off as "the rule of the people", you have to decide who counts and who doesn't, until you've narrowed the category far enough to get to something that there can intelligibly be such a thing as the rule of it. The way to narrow it down is simple and obvious. It's just that different answers are the obviously correct simple answer according to different people. Anyone who lives in a city isn't really a person, according to Republicans, just a piece of an undifferentiated mass of the unworthy. Anyone wealthier or more educated than you isn't really a person, according to populists, just a member of the elite, the enemies of the people. Or only the proletariat is the people, and the proletariat is most essentially the vanguard of the proletariat, and the vanguard of the proletariat is basically me (anyone else making a similar claim is a counterrevolutionary spreading false consciousness). One's neighborhood, one's ethnic group, whatever. It's not a bug that can just be fixed. It's an inevitable result of using the basic idea. We need a better idea.

The obvious possibility is majoritarianism. But once again, there is no such thing as the majority. There are exponentially many possible majorities, and they disagree just as much as individuals do. Even if we avoid that by picking one arbitrarily (and accept that our rule will be equally arbitrary), it's not a good option. Majorities pulled together by the use of money are unpleasantly close to just being plutocracy with extra steps. Majorities pulled together by ethnonationalist demagoguery are worse.

What I believe in is stable institutions that give everyone enough ability to influence policy that, no matter who you are or what policies you want, you can do better by working through the established institutions than by trying to subvert, circumvent, or overthrow them. If there are any such possible institutions, and any ability to choose among them, then I favor systems that enact written laws, have a functioning judicial systems, make reasonable guesses about which allegedly inherent rights really are inherent rights, do relatively well at preventing violations of those putative rights, and so on. Pretty much the same list of substantive stuff that people who believe in democracy tend to be in favor of. I just don't include the democracy part, and want to go with whatever works instead. 'Cause what we've got isn't working all that well, and there are a lot of other possibilities.

And they are free to continue the racial gerrymandering despite Amendments to the United States Constitution that forbid it because of another anti-majoritarian feature of our government: Article III of the constitution which vests judicial power in nine unelected judges who are appointed for life and have vested upon themselves inordinate power over policy and legislation to the point our "co-equal" branches of government are eroding along with the rights of citizens.