Representative direct democracy

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Representative direct democracy is a combination of direct democracy and representative democracy. In representative direct democracy there are representatives that vote on behalf of the citizen, as long as they do not choose to vote themselves. In other words, it works just the same as a representative democracy, as long as citizens do not explicitly override their politicians.

Representative direct democracy requires more sophisticated voting procedures than what is common in democracy. In practice it would probably require some form of electronic voting system that could automatically administer the votes of politicians, and the overriding votes of citizen. Also, the total number of votes in such a system would have to be based on the whole population, rather than just the number of representatives (i.e. representatives holds a number of votes, that exactly corresponds to how many citizen they represent).

A number of organizations for direct democracy has adopted this idea, and uses it in their voting system.

The main purpose of representative direct democracy is to avoid some of the criticisms against pure direct democracy, in particular that citizen would lack the time to participate in a pure direct democracy. In a representative direct democracy, citizen are given the possibility of direct participation, while maintaining the benefit of elected representatives that ensure sufficient amounts of indirect participation.

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