The US is low in the Democracy rankings World wide, as the oldest Democracy it has a LOT of legacy issues, the US is an extremely important Democracy on the World stage being how militarily and economically powerful it is

It's in the Worlds interest that the US improves/modernises it's Democracy by using 'best practice' learnt from younger Democracies around the World   

Any thoughts on this, or is this a well understood issue with US voters 

Majority elections

Got to separate the government from the corporate world. Too much influence on US politics by the latter.
Have more than 2 parties.
Get rid of first past the post.

Get rid of lobbying for fucks sake. (This one strikes particularly close to home, since my cousin is trying to be a lobbyist, but ban the practice)

Also bring back all of the provisions of the bipartisan campaign reform act of 2002.
Supreme court shouldn't have life long appointments
For the love of god pass some sort of amendment with regards to gerrymandering, or better yet use multi-member districts, some states used to use them. Albeit not for the best reasons, but they have been used in the past, and having 5 per district would allow for relatively balanced and representative districts.
I honestly don't even know how to fix the electoral college except by abolishment
The senate is another one that I don't know how to solve

Flawed is an understatement. It's a democracy under threat of not being one

The solution to corporatism is democratizing economics. Politics and economic used to be one thing but got separated and while politics was democratized, economics weren't. How about finishing the goal of democracy?

Considering the USA is a constitutional republic and representative democracy, being closer to the former than the latter, I think we can start by recognizing what the country is first.

The sickness of the US democracy can be mainly described as follows:

1. The acceptance of demagoguery. Let’s not mince words, Trump was a demagogue, and he was elected President because of the prejudices he spewed. This issue is almost exclusively on the right-wing side.

2. The view political parties as sports teams rather than representative bodies. And it doesn’t end at blind support, US political rallies literally look cheer rallies. There are also their political hooligans… crazed people who don’t really care about politics, just that their team wins. This is a problem on the far left and right. Less so in the more centrist politics, but only because people who are genuinely centrist are mixed in with the political apathetic/politically neutral who generally gravitate to more centrist politics.

3. Far too many following political figures like some kind of cult. This exists on the left and right side but almost non-existent in the center. The two most concerning cults were Trump and Bernie Sanders. But both were generally attacking the same thing. Trumpists would primarily attack and harass the leftist politicians and brigade their media support. The problem with the Bernie Sanders cultists is they ALSO targeted leftist politicians. It got so bad that Sanders cultists were attacking other leftist politicians more viciously than the Trump cultists. These sorts are not interested in democracy, but rather “only through X can the world be saved.”

How do you fix this? Better education about democracy and its history for starters.
If there’s no consequence for supporting demagogues, no consequence for cult-like support of politicians, and no consequences for political party hooliganism, then these problems won’t go away.

Education is the first and most necessary line of defence for democracy. Democracy exists within the people. And if the people are too uneducated about proper democratic conduct, the problems above won’t go away.

What's the point in even asking if so many are afraid to speak because of who and how many are silenced?

Might be a good place to start.

Who do you think is being silenced?