Check out California to see the sheer lunacy of the ballot system in action. Voter apathy combined with an incredibly uninformed voting population, and on top of that the inability to make any political modifications to a prop once it's passed? Yeah. Brilliant plan for populism, but otherwise not so good.

It gave us prop 8, written deliberately confusing to sway the vote. It gave us prop 47, which was a truckload of measures, many good, some horrible. Resulting in a huge increase in property crimes, which was a side effect that you'd only realize if you actually read the damn thing instead of the summary. Voters don't have that attention span. It gave us prop 69, essentially a state-run DNA database - into which you're entered on arrest instead of conviction. Because "but the children" always sells.

Or Brexit where people voted as a sign of protest, not because they wanted it. People who voted for it were surprised it passed.

"The notion that many people who voted "Leave" in the EU referendum now regret their vote because they didn't think "Leave" would win or they didn't realise the consequences of leaving the Single Market would be so bad." [1]

I think many of the problems of representative democracy stem from the fact that people don't read the bills, and they dont check their representatives voting history. Direct democracy seems much worse in that regard.

1. http://www.businessinsider.com/brexit-vote-regret-leave-marg...

Edit: added additional thought