Representative democracy is just that: representative, not direct. You have people who represent a whole body (district/state/whatever), not a drone that will pull a lever when you tell him to. They should try to determine what their whole electorate wants, not just the majority of it, and then faithfully represent that point of view in various ways, which is not just voting or fielding new laws.
Petitioning, per se, has always been a sort of plea, a supplication to the ruler that he should pay attention to something. You bring the petition to your ruler, he reads it, and then does what his conscience suggests him to do (which might be to prosecute every single signatory, for what we know). This hasn't changed. Petitions are tools to get topics "on the radar", providing another datapoint to decision-makers; nothing more, nothing less.
If you want direct democracy, then you need a website where you can propose laws and force the legislative branch to actually vote on them. This is a nice idea in theory, but in practice it's a quagmire waiting to happen (unless you really want laws glorifying Anonymous or public buildings dedicated to moot).
> They should try to determine what their whole electorate wants
I'd argue that they should determine what they whole electorate wants... but they should be striving for what their whole electorate needs. It may not get them re-elected, but getting re-elected isn't "supposed" to be their job, doing what's best for the people they represent is.
Sadly, none of that seems even close to common practice.
Yeah, there is an ongoing debate on the meaning of "representation", of course. After all, most electoral systems are based on geographical locations, but actual politicians usually belong to specific parties "representing" different political philosophies, so there's a friction even at a theoretical level. Add to that the vagaries of actual electoral rules (first-past-the-post etc etc) and an inevitable dose of human nature (corruption, ambition etc), and you have a recipe for the clusterfuck that is modern representative democracy.
Unfortunately, the few alternative models emerging in the last century (usually just variations on one-party rule, really) backfired quite spectacularly, so we're nowhere near finding better solutions to the problem.
We have direct democracy in California and the world isn't ending. I think essentially you just gather enough signatures for an issue and it gets put to a direct vote on the same ballot as the presidential elections.
Although it's by no means perfect (what is?), it does help solve the problem of special interests being able to buy politicians.
I'm not incredibly familiar with CA, but I'd argue you probably have some provisions for direct democracy, akin to referenda or people-proposed laws in some European countries. The main system is still fundamentally representative in nature.
Yes, but the point is that allowing people to directly petition the government via gathering signatures, which then triggers a public vote of the citizens, does not lead to quagmire. Far from it.
When done offline, no. When done online, though, it's a whole different ballgame. Even limited automation of electronic voting has been proven extremely unreliable and prone to fraud. This is not a big deal when consequences are limited (i.e. petitions, non-binding surveys etc), but when actual legislative action starts depending entirely on a few electrons, then it's a scandal waiting to happen.
Petitioning, per se, has always been a sort of plea, a supplication to the ruler that he should pay attention to something. You bring the petition to your ruler, he reads it, and then does what his conscience suggests him to do (which might be to prosecute every single signatory, for what we know). This hasn't changed. Petitions are tools to get topics "on the radar", providing another datapoint to decision-makers; nothing more, nothing less.
If you want direct democracy, then you need a website where you can propose laws and force the legislative branch to actually vote on them. This is a nice idea in theory, but in practice it's a quagmire waiting to happen (unless you really want laws glorifying Anonymous or public buildings dedicated to moot).