If you want to persuade people of the benefits of direct democracy, you probably don't want to bring up the California initiative system as an example. Ballot i

If you want to persuade people of the benefits of direct democracy, you probably don't want to bring up the California initiative system as an example. Ballot initiative's in California are part of the reason the state's government is so disfunctional, and they've ended up that way because they're such a bad version of direct democracy. Ballot initiatives just involve an up-or-down vote on specific issues in isolation, without involving the population directly in the responsibilities of day-to-day governing, so, as in California, you get an incoherent patchwork of spending commitments and limits on tax increases. A better example of direct democracy might be something like participatory budgeting. I see there's a plan to test this out in San Francisco [1], although the SF plan doesn't seem to involve the public deliberation that participatory budgeting in Brazil involved, which may make it exhibit the same problems as ballot initiatives. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/san-francisco-to-test-online-participatory-budgeting/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/san-francisco-to-test-onlin...