> Eh ballot-based democracy like the Swiss has seems to work quite well for centuries now.

OP was proposing replacing the current system with direct democracy whereas the swiss simply hold referenda on specific issues while they still have representatives to govern them.

Meanwhile, on the issues that they do vote on through referenda, it can result in popular support for discriminatory laws like the ban on ....Muslim temples with pointy roofs:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Swiss_minaret_referendu...

> The Swiss government recommended that the proposed amendment be rejected as inconsistent with the basic principles of the constitution.[3] However, after the results were tabulated, the government immediately announced that the ban was in effect.[4]

The problem is that people tend to believe that the outcome of an election or a referendum should be allowed to overrule basic human rights and national constitutions.

The OP was proposing ensuring that politicians answer to their electors.

The jump from there to direct democracy was already an straw-man. The jump from that to "no representatives on the middle" is completely baseless.

The suggestion being replied to here was: "I would vote for any candidate that committed to letting its registered users decide every vote he or she made."

I fail to see how that is substantially different from direct democracy.

What good would representative democracy be if each representative was just an empty vessel carrying out the collective wishes of a mass of Internet commenters?

This is widely-cited and has become a bit of a trope among many people here in Switzerland, but one famous example that isn't usually looked upon with pride today is the extremely delayed granting of suffrage to women in Switzerland (1971 nationally, 1991 in the last canton), or the current same-sex marriage referendum considered long-overdue by some. There are a few other human/civil rights along this vein that, at least to me, point to the possibility of a better system that can balance direct democracy (at least in the sense of modern Switzerland, California on a state level, etc.) with some longstanding sense of inherent rights.