Direct Democracy - Use it? Or Not?

[Ben]

The book describes a direct democracy as

[IndigoSunset]

So just to clarify before I weigh in(since I'm from the UK and we don't have the whole federal thing here): Direct Democracy is where people get to put forward legislative proposals at state level and they get voted on at election time as separate issues? Is that like in the Simpsons for example they've had adverts on the TV like "Vote yes on proposition 42" or something? And also, does Direct Democracy include things such as a nationwide referendum on an issue?(Such as changing the federal voting system for example)

[Ben]

So just to clarify before I weigh in(since I'm from the UK and we don't have the whole federal thing here): Direct Democracy is where people get to put forward legislative proposals at state level and they get voted on at election time as separate issues? Is that like in the Simpsons for example they've had adverts on the TV like "Vote yes on proposition 42" or something? And also, does Direct Democracy include things such as a nationwide referendum on an issue?(Such as changing the federal voting system for example)

That is true. Referendums, acts, and things like that. Those are all examples of Direct Democracy. Like I stated in my paragraph, Clean Water Act, Gay Marriage, etc are things voted upon with direct democracy. It's the public/citizens voting upon issues.

[munsterpoo]

A bigger reason not to embrace direct democracy is that most human beings just don't care about the mundane issues, and are only vaguely familiar about the big issues, easily swayed by fear (Republicans) and emotional hype (Democrats), and those that do take a concerted effort to research and study get outvoted by the clueless. I don't care how you vote, as long as I can have a conversation with you and you can defend your use of voting power.

None of us can know what it's like to be in government, and so the founders had it right that we don't deserve the right to vote for president or senators, I'm totally not for direct democracy, if public sentiment mounts against something in a non direct democratic setting, politicians (specifically in this case the House and state governments) will either be pressured to vote with changing sentiment or lose their reelection.

The American electorate is easily swayed by irrelevant things, Presidential politics and Senate elections should not be the same as House elections, but they are because of the popular vote, it's amazing it's taken us this long to get to where we're at.