To democracy and freedom for the core value of the referendum system has produced since the implementation of direct democracy and development has played a positive role in promoting this.
James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and their peers, as they met for the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787, had deliberately rejected direct democracy.
Consequently, in a direct democracy it would be impossible for every single voter to go through a process of intensive reflection, even if the whole population were to do nothing else but think about politics.
This has been a trAgedy for California, but it matters far beyond the state's borders. Around half of America's states and an increasing number of countries have direct democracy in some form.
There is, after all, a successful model: in Switzerland direct democracy goes back to the Middle Ages at the local level and to the 19th century at the federal.
