The chamber’s verdict was a near-draw: No won by two votes. That narrow margin, on a self-selected online page rather than a poll of the country, makes the hesitation more revealing than the victory; the question exposed distrust without producing faith in a single remedy.
The Yes side’s most respected argument put the suspicion plainly: direct votes might work, “Though that would require the elite to believe in the common sense of the proles”. The other Yes voices softened the claim rather than expanded it, calling the system “part of an answer, not the whole tho” and making it conditional on “transparent systems… to prevent corruption”.
No offered the more concrete objection, with its strongest case warning that “decision makers must have a responsibility and accountability for their decisions”. A second No voice worried that turnout would be “low & not necessarily representative”; the two sides were therefore arguing past each other, Yes about recovering trust and No about who bears the consequences when policy goes wrong.
That is the familiar fault line between the promise of Swiss-style participation and the warning supplied by California’s ballot propositions: representative politics is distrusted, but mass votes are not automatically trusted either. The chamber’s split suggests that frustration with manifesto-breaking politicians has not settled the harder question of whether voters want to govern every decision themselves.
The result was less an endorsement of the old system than a refusal to hand direct democracy the whole answer.
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Though that would require the elite to believe in the common sense of the proles and they still clearly despise the proles.
Judging from recent voting records, I would expect the turnout to be low & not necessarily representative.
It's probably part of an answer, not the whole tho
It's an interesting question. The problem is that having such a system would omit a critical component: decision makers must have a responsibility and accountability for their decisions. In a direct democracy, a voter doesn't have to worry about practicalities that necessarily affect the context of a decision. To give a simple example: let's have a direct democracy vote about cancelling all forms of taxation. No doubt that would be immensely popular. But utterly catastrophic.