It's because democracy is broken. Votes should count one for one. The three people from some city that doesn't have running water shouldn't have a say in what we do in a city that drives the state economy.
Yeah well the US was never set up on a true democracy. It was done that way for a reason, it was because they didn't want large cities basically being able to control the entire country because things that may be good for cities may not necessarily be good for small towns in the midwest. That more or less trickled down to the States so that once again you didn't have for instance Nashville strictly making policy for them that would leave towns like Shelbyville, Tullahoma, Manchester, and Spencer hung out to dry.
The system actually works how it's supposed to oddly enough. There is some odd things here and there that could be corrected ( most of it having to do with gerrymandering ), but overall most have a voice in whatever arena that is. The problem is that at some point we all decided if we didn't get exactly what we wanted, how we wanted, and when we wanted, that the system was broken. It's setup to force varying groups to reach a compromise that benefits everyone, not just one group of people. Because as bad as you think it is now, go to a strict majority rules and you will see just how ugly true democracy can be and just exactly why the founders of the nation avoided that very thing.
If you want to get a sense of just how ugly it can get, well you can pretty much look at the South post civil war, when the majority of voters were white males and they pretty much dictated everything for everyone else. It can get real ugly real fast.
Like I said earlier though it's been worse than this in the past, just go back and look at things from the 1840's to the 1880's and also the Jacksonian era. Poilitics and the country was real freaking ugly, and there are times before then it was pretty rough too.
