Part of the issue is that not enough people vote, period. But the other half of the issue is that some places are highly gerrymandered, which makes voting weighted much more towards a certain party (typically republican, using rural areas to break the power of bigger, well educated cities). They do even more damage by downplaying the power of voting and calling into question the voting system itself. And occasionally making it more difficult to vote (eg, making it so you have to vote in person and stand in long, sunbaked lines when you need to be at work, reducing the time you can mail in your ballot, trying to pass laws that require IDs to be shown, or other things that make it more difficult for low income or young people to vote.)

It’s a difficult problem to solve once it starts, especially since several smaller issues add up to much larger, more difficult to see issues (on voting, it looks like many areas are much more republican than they otherwise should be, even if they had history of being blue or flipping often until voting lines were redrawn. These groups that redraw voting districts are not done by independent government bodies, which makes them susceptible to corruption.)

Many people want change, but aren’t well educated on how to change things, or have the leadership needed to unite areas or otherwise form coalitions.

The same way there’s a vast difference between Germany, Italy, and Hungary, there’s also a massive difference between Rhode Island, Kansas, and Oregon. Though we all vote in federal elections just the same.