In the UK electoral system, you vote for a local representative (Member of Parliament or MP) for the area (Constituency) you live in. The winner is whoever gets the most votes. Sometimes the winner can get under 30% of the votes, but will win if they score 1 more vote than the 2nd placed person.
That MP then "represents" their Constituency for up to 5 years.
So, if I vote for someone who doesn't win the local election, my vote is from then onward useless and has no further effect on the political system for 5 years. This makes it pretty much a waste of time to even bother voting in many constituencies as candidates for certain parties are certain to win.
Certainly where I live the local MP has been from the Conservative Party since 1970 so it's pretty much pointless going to vote, although I still do, every time.
In most of the European elections, they use a Proportional Representation method.
In PropRep you vote for a Party, not an individual, and if that party gets 22% of the votes for that election, they get 22% of the seats.
In that respect your vote continues to represent you for the term of that election.
There are historical reasons for the local representative method of elections, (distances and communication delays) but those reasons no longer hold true, so our elections need to change.
Your system suffers from similar issues, but at least you have 3 elections (Congress, Senate, President) per term.
We get one and then our MP is supposed to represent us from then on, only he/she doesn't represent me, and she/he never has.
No, I have never in my life voted for a candidate who has gone on to win.
Representative Democracy?