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You have a good point! I don't have an opinion about direct voting per se, because, as you rightly pointed out, it seems to work just fine in Switzerland. In the context of German political culture, though, I'm pretty sceptical that we'd see results comparable to Switzerland. One point: Germany has very large differences in voting turnout split by income bracket in anything smaller than federal elections. Even in federal elections the difference is enormous: One example is Hamburg 2013, where about 50% of the poor voted, but 90% of the rich.[1] This obviously heavily skews the results. My impression is that Switzerland has lower differences in turnout by income bracket?

[1] = http://www.wahlbeteiligung2013.de/fileadmin/Inhalte/Studien/... - search for "Stadtbericht Hamburg"