Is the USA a republic or a democracy?

Democracy in the USA ¹

According to USA government, America is a representative democracy: citizens vote for their elected officials to represent the citizens’ ideas and concerns in government.

Citizens can also contact their officials when they want to support or change a law.

1. USCIS Government and You PDF open_in_new

From what I can find, they either accidentally or intentionally misrepresent info.

They often seem to mean one of two things:

1. That the USA is not a direct/pure democracy open_in_new, though no one appears to be legitimately arguing that it is. It's a representative/indirect democracy, where instead of voting on every government decision (direct), citizens elect representatives to vote on their behalf (indirect). Whether moving toward a more direct democracy would give Americans more liberty open_in_new is often an honest debate. But, pretending that direct democracy is the only form seems rather dubious, no?

2. That the presidential election is not a popular vote open_in_new, unlike all other USA elections. A sound sounding argument is that the electoral college open_in_new has effectively disenfranchised much of the USA through gerrymandering open_in_new and further voter suppression open_in_new. From what I understand, this would make its democracy imperfect and flawed, but neither non-existant nor necessarily unimproving. At least, not yet.
   
   Note: Even if the USA did have a direct, popular vote for president, it still would not be a direct democracy. A popularly elected president, like all other elected officials, makes decisions unreliant on citizens' votes (in other words, they represent the citizens who elected them in a representative democracy).

Here's how a variety of other people have come to a similar conclusion: it ain't just me over here!