All of these are excellent points and I'll also note (to the OP) that the US has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the world. In some states, like California, we all get Vote by Mail ballots and so basically everyone can easily vote if they want to. In other states, they've gone as far as making sure counties with primarily minority populations only get one polling station, open for like 10 hours during the actual election day (Tuesday), and of course election day isn't a work holiday. Think of how that skews the actual voter demographics. That's why we're recently* so close to fascist takeovers, the people who actually genuinely need help from the government are effectively unable to participate in the election process so that they can vote for a government that will help them, because they're busy working, or they don't have a car to get to the singular polling location, or there's no way they can get childcare while they stand in line for hours.
Edit: changed always to recently -- my brain has been skewed by the recency of the Reagan era onwards, but yeah it hasn't always been this way, whoops