"Representative Democracy" ??

Kia-ora

Representative democracy is a contradiction in terms. You either have democracy, which is rule by all the people, or you do not. Representative democracy is simply a change of dictatorship, possibly, at each election.

Democracy is resisted by politicians of all stripes because they are all arrogant enough to believe they know better than the rest of us, being, mostly, self selected people who want power.

They will resist giving any power to the rest of us to their last breath.

A few cherry picked results of Switzerland's or California's system of voting are commonly used as an argument against democracy. The results are representative of their societies and would probably have occurred in the quoted cases under a revolving elected dictatorship anyway.

In fact, in New Zealand, the public supported women's suffrage. It was parliament who held it up. Under the Swiss system of direct democracy NZ would have most likely voted women the vote much sooner than we did . Same with gay rights.

Politicians very often get it appallingly wrong.
It is doubtful that a majority of the public would have voted to throw the baby out with the bathwater in the 80's. Or to Ruthenasia in the 90's, to name just two cases.
Muldoon would not have been able to gerrymander his way into power for so many years with election bribes to a couple of minorities.

Just because some people on the left disagreed with the majority on a recent referendum does not invalidate the principal.

Wisconsin and some other American States have a good track record with BCIR. Why do opponents of democracy always talk only about California?

Other arguments against democracy usually show an unstated contempt for ordinary people. They "dared to disagree with me they must be wrong" or "they cannot have understood the question".

Self determination means making decisions for ourselves, not having 120 self important, arrogant and mostly ignorant politicians making them for us.

"If voting made any difference they would abolish it" Abe Lincoln.
"Democracy is the worst system of Government, except for all the others" Winston Churchill.