Buy a clue.
Both the Primary vote and the General Election vote are defined as a DEMOCRATIC process.
The DEMOCRATIC process (and GUNS) sustain the REPUBLIC.
We remain a REPUBLIC only so long as we vote DEMOCRATICALLY and win the majority of electoral votes.
If it was a total democratic process, the few states with huge populations would always control who’d be president. The fact, as you state, we’d remain a republic if we vote democratically is because of the electoral vote which incidentally Hillary wants to do away with.