If you want a real working democracy, look at Switzerland. Or maybe at very local, neighborhood level in the US here and there, at the scale where people <i>actually care and know</i>.<p>To note: the entire Switzerland's population is 8.5M, about the size of 5 boroughs of New York City. They have <i>twenty six</i> cantons, all with severely different policies, and 2222 municipalities. Of course most voting occurs at municipal level, then cantonal level.<p>To my mind, nowhere in the world any larger state managed to get to the "level of democracy" which is possible and has been demonstrably achieved at smaller scales.<p>What additionally exacerbates the situation in the US is the two-party system that effectively polarizes people instead of nudging them to look for compromises.<p>The electoral college made sense in 1770s, with a much smaller population, and very slow communication. By now, it results in interesting side effects that probably could be avoided using different mechanisms. Still I think that no large nation has deployed any such mechanisms to successfully achieve "real democracy" and not some form of oligarchy. Mass media is a major factor in that; national scale being hard to comprehend and relate to for a voter is another.