Most european countries simply don't have any problems with pen and paper voting. Turnout is typically much larger than in the US with its crazy mix of electronic/mail-in/in-person voting. Probably this is due to automatic voter registration for all citizens, having the elections on Sunday or on a holiday, and (in some cases) not having a first-past-the-post system where a large fraction of votes don't matter anyway.

Yes we do, everyone has them. There is an unimaginable difference between a system where you can have a referendum on =X once per year and it costs 10mil or a system where you can have a referendum every second and it costs ~0. We can then vote for issues directly instead of having people that may or may not (as is most often the case) vote in a way they signal they would before elected.

Referenda are a terrible way of governing.

Think about Brexit - bad faith arguing from one side, constant lying, no plan about how to actually leave, and then a protest vote pushed it last 50% so now we have to leave on a no deal because it's an impossible policy to do in a few years.

A referendum is OK for deep constitutional issues, but policy should not be decided by referenda especially vague ones.

Policy is also quite hard to undo, a direct voting system would like lead to us living in a rent-controlled, capital punishment-ing, overtaxed reactionary world.

And yet, the option to take part in a series of referendums works splendidly in Switzerland [1]. This is also what I've anecdotally observed from living in Switzerland.

Perhaps, if the option to vote on an issue were presented often, people would have time to change their minds and would become more involved in the voting process. The reason a second referendum on Brexit wasn't held was because it was deemed infeasible. Not so with electronic voting.

1: http://direct-democracy.geschichte-schweiz.ch/switzerlands-s...

I would argue that the Swiss system only "works" because the people reject the vast majority of referendums and let the elected parliament do the actual policy work. In total, only 22 have been successful since 1891. Most of them were on populist issues (often fueled by xenophobia) and had little to no influence on everyday life.

That is simply not true. There have been hundreds of successful referendums, many on non-xenophobic issues, and what's the problem with populism? The point of a democracy is to be populist!

Take 2006:

- Financial aid to new EU members, 2006-11-26, overall result: YES

- Standardized extra pay for families, 2006-11-26, overall result: YES

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> How many referendums are successfully passed?

> The Swiss have been called on to vote around 306 times since 1848 for a total of 617 proposals. In total, 299 proposals have been passed while 334 have been rejected.

From: https://www.thelocal.ch/20190517/why-does-switzerland-have-s...