This is how it works here. We have local, cantonal and federal laws; the laws to vote on are presented in packages once every two months (so every time, people vote on both local and federal laws). Our participation is not a joke.
Every Swiss citizen can propose a law to be voted on one of the next referendums, provided that they will collect the appropriate minimum number of signatures in its support.
Just to look at your claim for a moment. Voter turnout for referendums moves between 30 and 50 percent, and referendums appear to decide about 10 questions on average per year. Which is hardly the paragon of direct democracy.
However, you missed the part of my comment where I wasn’t talking about Switzerland at all, I was talking in generalities about the places where it was being discussed as an idea to implement.
Take LA for example. A lot of people who post here seem to have strong opinions on how that city is run, and I’d bet a lot of them even live there. If the LA city council elections generate turnout in the mid-teens, that is considered very high. Turnout below 10% is not strange.
Switzerland’s voter turnout is actually quite pedestrian. It’s higher than a lot of local elections in the US for sure, and perhaps even high enough to prevent the kind of special interest local government policies you see all over the US. But just because something seems to mostly work in one single, small, rich European country, doesn’t mean it will work as well anywhere else.
Low turnout happens exactly because there is no transparent, understandable and visible feedback between voters decision and government actions. Direct democracy provides this kind of feedback: all laws or measures voted in have to be implemented in specific timeframes, and reported back to voters. It is OK to have 10% turnout for a measure that affects only 10% of population (our laws are fine-grained), for more polarizing issues the turnout is usually much higher.
> Low turnout happens exactly because there is no transparent, understandable and visible feedback between voters decision and government actions
That’s an interesting thesis, but it’s not at all substantiated. Switzerland may have a better voter turnout than LA city council elections, but it has some of the worst turnout in the OECD[0]. If I was going to take a complete guess at the reason (as you did), I’d say it’s a cultural thing more than anything else (outside the influence of compulsory voting laws).
Every Swiss citizen can propose a law to be voted on one of the next referendums, provided that they will collect the appropriate minimum number of signatures in its support.