The greatest threat to American democracy is the voting public. Candidates for political office, organized interests, and political parties are often blamed for the ills of American democracy, but this book places the focus on the core issue in American politics: a disengaged, demanding, and often contradictory voting public. Structural reforms such as the direct primary, term limits, and campaign finance regime reforms make the problems worse rather than better because these structural reforms fail to address core issues that disengage the voting public from republican politics.