And that is actually the correct answer, Dylan. None are represented. Are you ready for diving into this? I'll try to keep it simple.
When focusing on the bottom ten percent of the voters (so, not the bottom ten percent of all folks), then we can know that they will never receive their representatives.
The majority rules, and as such the USA is a middle-of-the-road democracy, always.
We can first state that in the areas where a lot of poor live, that they are then in the majority and can have their representatives. It appears that they can have their representative, right? Yet the outcome of the small district is already a compromise of what all voters really desire. The voters overall cannot articulate themselves with exacting representatives when there is just a single seat to vote on. Next, we have a few more elections for the levels up (local, State, Federal elections) and the compromise-upon-compromise situation ensures that the bottom ten percent of the voters are never represented. If they were at that one local level, then for certain they will not at the larger levels.
You think they are represented by a few candidates, Sanders, AOC, but these candidates themselves are already the product of the system in which compromising occurs long before everyone sits in their seats. The bottom ten percent would not have picked these candidates but rather candidates that really spoke about their issues. They got nothing (or per your idea, they received their compromise).
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Let me state this a different way.
We have red and blue only, with gray and purple the alternatives.
We do not have yellow, green, or orange in any of the seats. All candidates had to subject themselves to the voting system. They are not allowed to stand on their own political grounds because they will not win unless they are red, blue, gray or purple. The system voids any other option.
In Denmark, all seats are voted on at the same time; there are no districts. Ten percent of the voters get ten percent of the seats. In these ten percent of the seats, the representative represent these voters. As such, they are truly representative of the voters. Ten percent of voters getting ten percent of the seats is why it is called pro-portional. The portions on both side of the equation are identical.
We do not have identical portions. As soon as you walk into the voting block, you already agreed that certain candidates cannot win. We have winner-take-all; they do not have winners-and-losers and they do not compromise in the voting booth; they compromise in the political process.
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A friend once responded to a remark I made about egalitarian societies with saying that we in the US do not like socialists. My reply: We do not know that because the socialists cannot win seats. She had to agree that the voting system eliminates candidates; it censors the voters. Her position could not be sustained because she could not point out that all voters do not want socialists. All voters are herded into a voting mechanism in which the outcome is different from all voters.
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The US Constitution tells us the following, voting system-wise:
Federal Level: Concentration of Powers, to ensure the nation is strong, and yes it is.
State levels: XXXXX (the US Constitution contradicts itself, so there is no clarity on what system must be used for the State levels).
Local Levels: We The People galore. The Ninth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments tell us that local governments must deliver a voting system that is We The People. Thomas Jefferson already devised that system, so it was and is readily available.
Yet this is not what we have in place. What we have is:
Federal Level: Concentration of Powers
State levels: Concentration of Powers
Local Levels: Concentration of Powers
At first opportunity, the State powers that be started to make themselves as powerful as possible, competing with other states and with the Federal level. They got their hands on as much power as they could, ignoring the US Constitution for what they should do for State elections (yet were unfortunately able to get away with). Insult to injury, they made local elections such that the powers that be would keep more power as well. And that is the part that contradicts the US Constitution completely, and with certainty.
As a result of what the State powers that be concocted, we are not a We The People nation at any level. We should have at least the local level be We The People, and likely the State level as well.
Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain are We The People nations.
