politics
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Direct voting has some definite drawbacks mostly involved with the amount of time it takes to fully read and digest each instance of bill making. Everyone has an opinion but just check around here and you will see how often people will comment without doing so much as an easy google search to bring up the specifics about how programs work. I don't think that I would want that principle dictating my life. Legislation requires briefs and budgets to be read and attempted to be understood and that means time. If you didn't put a stipulation on everybody having to sit through the brief then basically you are voting continually on unnuanced, pop culture ideas of how something works. If you put the stipulations of having to participate in the brief then you have a system that favors people with free time... Time for that kind of pursuit favors people who don't need to spend every minute trying to work to make it to the next rent payment.
Like it or not the act of voting on legislative matters to make a body of government run should be a full time gig. I personally throw my lot in with the idea of Democratic lotteries where anyone can volunteer for a random chance at a seat for a term but winning requires that you accept all responsibility to do the job properly. If you slack off, try and break the rules or can't show up you lose the spot. I have more trust that the demi random sample of people in the system will more represent a reasonable approximation of the overall will of the people then the politicians that get elected usually because the can sort of perform like parrots saying the best catchphrases they think people want to hear to solicit votes.
Also since the system would have no campaigns it would partially eliminate the possibility of having politicians and outside business interests in bed together. It would mean you'd have to crack down on the possibility of winning candidates being bribed for kickbacks upon exit from political power... But our current elected system has this problem anyway.
So? People can vote for the bills they want, and ignore the ones they don't. They'll still have more power than they do now.
Funny. You use "allowing other people to make decisions for you" as though it's a drawback to direct voting when that's all a representative democracy is.
I would rather the people making choices on my behalf be held to some basic level of account then basically leaving it to a series of Facebook polls. In a democracy at some level someone else is always determining the rules that bind the individual. You as an individual are beholden to whatever principle fuels the majority of vote casters. I actually have no issue with allowing people to make the vast plethora of nessisary mundane decisions for me in a government setting but I would like those decisions to be backed up by accountability and be presented so that all side of the issue can be weighed appropriately and care be taken to make sure binding law is made carefully.
Direct voting takes a very simplistic stance regarding law. It imagines that by chipping in for the things you personally care about things will get done... But behind every law there is a web of things that require careful consideration as to things like exact wording, how it dovetails into previously existing law structure, giving chance for expert opinion to be consulted and to present their case in regards to predicted outcome, reasonable debate towards reaching concensus... For everything. A staggering amount of minutiae designed to keep the process stable and fair.
That's the thing. They're not making choices on your behalf.
Hence the "see how often Congress ignores the will of the people."
Ah. I am Canadian. We have a parliment. The American system's imploding nature due to partisan politics utilizing it's own neurotic infrastructure to essentially cheat is something that negatively effects my daily life but I do not get to vote on that.