[handmodel]

California essentially has a referendum system. But it's very confusing. Every ballot has like ~20 of them so as an informed person I have views on many of them. But then there are ones like "Should we fund this stem cell research project for 4B that looks into this" and people have no idea how to vote. Things sound good and then you realize it was funded by very specific group of people and the money would go to their own project. Even though we shit on legislators having super well-informed people with staffs actually does lead them to work out kinks and negotiate good policy that pleases a larger swath of people.

[zeven7]

Exactly, I don't want to have to be an expert on every issue that needs to be decided. And I don't want to trust regular people with other jobs and areas of focus to be those experts either. Job specialization was an important invention. Let's give people the job of figuring out policy, and let's hold them accountable by regularly voting on whether they stay in office.