If a significant portion of the electorate doesn't want something, how do they keep the government from implementing it? Because it's certainly not by voting. I'm dead serious. Why does a government do things that its people don't want it to do?
There are some things that the people may want to do, but that the government should still not do. This is why we're a republic, and not a democracy: to prevent the tyranny of the majority. The idea is that a constitution limits the power of the majority. The only deciding factor to any action by government (or lack thereof) is: is the act constitutional? In the US, this question is decided by the judiciary.
Since a court already opined that such surveillance is illegal, it shows how much stronger the executive branch is in comparison to the others. Since the legality of the surveillance is in question, in a fair and reasonable system, a court would order an injunction against the surveillance until the legality was settled. What complicates this matter, is the executive branch's position that even discussing the legality of their actions is classified and secret. Pretty sad from the administration that promised us transparency.
In part because voters don't vote for those who maximally represent their interests. It's a rare opportunity to vote for a candidate I support; normally I vote for the least-bad, simply because a candidate I support isn't there.
Voters may prioritize one (or few) cause(s) over others, leaving them disenchanted when a low-priority issue gains importance.
If the American system hadn't been successful for centuries, I'd have guessed that it wouldn't work.
The primary system, where candidates for the general election are selected, emphasizes the core/extremal parts of each party. The general election emphasizes centrist views. The usual result are candidates who will tell people what they want to hear. This makes it more difficult to predict what a candidate will do in office. Furthermore, a candidate who aspires to greater office may not do an optimal job in his/her present position in order to tune appearances for the coming election. Term limits would go a long way toward addressing this latter problem.
We get the government we vote for, and we don't always (normally?) vote for those who might do the best job.
Contrary to popular belief, the American government does not actually represent its people. It represents special interest groups, which is a euphemism for "those who have money." Once your mind makes that paradigm shift, everything becomes incredibly easy to understand.
The fact of the matter is that the seeming irrationality and inefficiency of American government is a feature, rather than a bug. The inefficiency and general waste in government affairs actually serve to obfuscate the real functions and purpose of the state and makes reform vastly more complex and costly than it otherwise would be. The example I like to give is the tax code. The income tax started out as a tax on wealth and it used to be that only a very small percentage of households paid anything. Over time though, the burden of taxation shifted downward onto the middle class, while the elite simultaneously found alternative means of storing their wealth to avoid taxation almost completely. The problem is that the tax code is so complex now that most people cannot even comprehend the amount of loopholes in it. The only people who can are tax attorneys working for corporations and the ultra-rich. This is what I mean by the inefficiency and general waste serves to obfuscate the issue.
And the funny thing is, this is all working exactly as intended. The wealthy tightly control the system and the rest of the population is too distracted fighting for the crumbs to actually organize, form meaningful alliances and fight to change the status quo. What they do instead is share news articles and memes on Facebook and sign silly petitions on the Internet to be able to pat themselves in the back for fighting the good fight. They just want to feel good about themselves.
At the end of the day, this is because the vast majority of people don't actually care about the events that happen around them. They care about their self-perceived role in those events and their own feelings. You can actually see this type of behavior in many different cases outside politics. Take something as simple as exercise. A lot of people sign up for personal trainers, not because they actually want to exercise correctly and lose weight, but because the act of making superficial effort (such as paying a small amount of money) towards a goal is sufficient to make them feel good. And if they fail at weight loss, they can tell themselves that, well, they at least tried. Which is what the signers of this petition are going to tell themselves when it accomplishes nothing.
If a significant portion of the electorate doesn't want something, how do they keep the government from implementing it? Because it's certainly not by voting. I'm dead serious. Why does a government do things that its people don't want it to do?