Democracy describes the principle that the legitimacy and power of a government is derived from the people being governed. There are many ways to organize a government in accordance with democratic principles. Direct democracies are marked by the direct participation of voters in decision making. The Swiss government is perhaps the most prominent government that comes close to being a direct democracy. In Switzerland, it is common for groups of voters to band together and make proposals for laws that are then voted upon by the rest of the electorate, often with little input from elected representatives or bureaucrats. Other forms of democracy, like representative democracy, are distinguished by putting most decision-making responsibilities into the hands of elected or appointed representatives who are accountable to voters. 

In a parliamentary democracy, the leader of the executive branch will always be the same as the leader of the legislature. In a presidential democracy, like the the government of the United States, there are separate elections for the legislature and the executive branch. This creates a situation where the presidency and Congress may be controlled by different political parties. Because of this diffusion of power, it is harder to pass legislation in a presidential democracy, as the executive and the legislature might disagree; however, there are more checks and balances in the presidential system.

In order to alter the Constitution of the United States of America, an amendment must be passed by either a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the state legislatures.

The powers of the President are collectively outlined in Article II of the United States Constitution.

Appointing Judges to the Supreme Court is a power reserved for the President of the United States.

A Presidential election takes place every four years so if an election takes place in 1860 the next election will be in 1864. The most recent election was in 2012, so the next election will be in 2016.

The head of the Executive Branch of the Federal government, the President, is limited to two terms. Originally this was enforced by tradition alone, following the precedent established by George Washington; however, after Franklin D. Roosevelt exceeded this limit during World War Two and the Great Depression, the limit was codified into the Constitution with the passage of the Twenty-Second Amendment.

Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution states: 

[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The President of the United States is vested with the considerable power to appoint thousands of different officials, ranging in power from low level regulators all the way to the Justices of the Supreme Court. This is an enormous task for one person to undertake, and the drafters of the Constitution provided for Senatorial advice and consent as a check on both abuse and poor performance in appointments by a President. 

The representatives each state gets varies by its population in the House of Representatives. So, California, which is currently the most populous state, gets a lot more representatives than Wyoming, which is currently the least populous state. In the Senate, every state gets two representatives, regardless of size. The system was set up this way because of a disagreement between state representatives at the Constitutional Convention. The larger states' representatives wanted to have their larger populations reflected by greater representation, whereas the smaller states' representatives feared they would have no power in the system and would be mere subjects of the larger states. A compromise was reached, which is called the Connecticut Compromise, or the Great Compromise.

In the American Legislature there are two houses. The House of Representatives, where each state is apportioned a different number of representatives relative to the population of the state, and the Senate. In the Senate, every State has exactly two members, regardless of the population of the state.