Democracy Or Not?

I had never really thought about democracy as something that exists along a spectrum (but the more I think about various topics in general, it seems that nothing is ever really an either/or as we generally think of them). I had always assumed that here in the US we live in a democracy, but I’m not really sure at one point along that spectrum you go from “no democracy”, where citizens have zero say in how things are run, to an “ideal democracy”, where everyone’s vote counts, and counts equally. We’ve never had an “ideal democracy” in the US — as a Californian, my vote has always counted less than the votes of people in some other states. But as we gerrymander state representatives to favor some groups of people more than others, we’re moving even further away from that “ideal democracy.” How far can you move before it really isn’t democracy any more?