Participatory Democracy Facilitates the Misrepresentation of Issues  An intrinsic problem with participatory democracy is that issues are easily misrepresented to the public. Whilst most voters may be intelligent and informed enough to understand a single issue in isolation, they will almost certainly not understand its complex relationship with other issues, and what a “yes” or “no” vote would mean for everything else – this is because only a full-time politician has the time and the resources to properly understand how dozens of different government policies fit together. An example of this effect is that in 1978 Californians voted to pass an amendment making it almost impossible to raise taxes, and then in 1994 voted for the “Three Strikes” Law that tripled their prison population. As a result, California is now almost bankrupt. [1] The reason why this happened was that these issues were presented in isolation from one another and from other issues as a simple yes-or-no choice – the public just didn’t connect the fact that if they were going to lock up more people for life, they would need higher taxes.  [1] Adams, G. (18 February 2009) “Jobs terminated as California goes bankrupt” The Independent.