As others here have pointed out, the United States is not a democracy, it is a republic. People seem to think that the fact that they can vote means that they're participating in a democratic process. If you take time to look at how elections, or any other kind of voting work, you'll notice that it is based solely on persuasion in better cases, or corruption in worst cases.

Take for example the whole election industry, those election advisers which can win or lose presidential elections, or the system of lobbying. These institutions commoditize the persons or legislation which they support, in an attempt to produce demand for these commodities. This, of course, is just another extension of imperialist capitalism. But please don't infer that i am a communist. Communism simply wishes to replace the dictatorship of capital with that of the proletariat.

Do you really think you have a say in what your government is doing? Do you think your government is listening to you? Do you think you'll be able to read and understand the text of one law, any law? (If you have the money to pay to aquire the text, as some laws are copyrighted by private organizations.) Because the republic works by persuasion, it is in its interests to keep the masses uninformed and uneducated.

But there is an alternative. Let me quote here from Lou Harrison's Political Primer:

'...The offices of a Democracy are filled by lottery from among the eligible citizens. There exists no democracy of any size in 1958 as far as I know. The jury system of the government of Americans is democratic, but it is not a government. However matters of profound and often complex justice, including matters of life and death, are confidently entrusted to it...
'The advantages of a Democracy are obvious: simplicity of laws and transactions so that all would know them, for it might fall to anyone to fill an office, respect for knowledge and consequently for education; friendliness, the pleasure of chance (almost like "chance of birth"), and also, importantly, privacy...'

Yes, Utopia!!!