In a republic, the citizens do not rule directly but, instead, elect officeholders to represent them and conduct government business in the period between elections. In the United States, legislation is crafted by officeholders who serve for a term of two years (in the U.S. House of Representatives) or six years (in the U.S. Senate), and the executive branch is run by a President who serves for a term of four years. The United States has a "Republican form of government" because of this division of power between the citizenry and elected officeholders.

The division of power between the citizenry and elected officeholders is not affected by the boundaries of the region used to tally popular votes in choosing presidential electors. The United States is neither less nor more a "republic" based on whether presidential electors are selected along state boundary lines (used by 48 states), along district lines (used by Maine and Nebraska), or on a nationwide basis.

The meaning of the word "republic" and the phrase "Republican form of government" can be ascertained by examining the one place in the U.S. Constitution that makes reference to a "Republican form of government."

Direct popular election of the chief executive is not prohibited by the phrase "Republican form of government." State governors were selected by state legislatures when the U.S. Constitution was written. Today, the governor of every state is elected by a direct popular vote. No one has ever argued that the states denied their citizens a "Republican form of government" when they switched to direct popular election of their chief executives. No one has ever argued that the federal government should have invoked the Guaranty Clause and intervened (militarily or otherwise) to prevent the states from electing their chief executives by popular vote.

The question of whether the United States is, or is not, a "republic" has no connection with the issue of whether its chief executive is elected under the statewide winner-take-all system (i.e., awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each separate state), under a district system, or a national popular vote system (in which the winner is the candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia).