He was quickly struck by the way the referendum process overshadowed the legislative process, leaving the state representatives practically irrelevant as the voters directly settled the most pressing political issues, like physician-assisted suicide, tax policy and affirmative action. Moreover, Broder noticed that the voters didn't just bypass the legislators, they looked upon them as usurpers, a sort of alien class whose main activity was to frustrate the popular will. This, he observed, is not the way the American system of government is supposed to work. In ''Democracy Derailed,'' Broder points out that the founders went to a lot of trouble to prevent this sort of direct democracy. Pure democracies, they believed, are unstable.
Passions go unchecked.
Majorities oppress minorities. I go on the great republican principle that the people will have the virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom,'' he said at the Virginia ratifying convention of 1788. The founders hoped for a country in which the voters would select leaders of superior wisdom and ability, whose minds would be further sharpened by deliberative procedures. They were more candid about the problems that inhere in democracy than we are allowed to be. For over the past two centuries, their measured belief in democracy has hardened into a near-religious faith that the people are the fount of all wisdom, and that anything that interferes with their direct rule is illegitimate and antidemocratic.