Although social media and other new things might be important, I wonder whether this is deeper, and older, than that. In the USA, people vote on basically ever

Although social media and other new things might be important, I wonder whether this is deeper, and older, than that. In the USA, people vote on basically everything, as though it makes sense to poll the public on who should be a dog catcher, a sheriff, ... a judge, even. Ask people for their opinion often enough, and they may infer that their opinion is valuable, even if uninformed. Perhaps it's not that Americans don't trust experts, so much as they think that they are the experts. The independent spirit seems to be baked into the cake, for a nation that began as a tax revolt.