You missed the most important problem with a true democracy; majority rules = mob rules. Do you really trust the idiots around you with that kind of power? Granted, I trust the idiots in Washington either.

Fragmentation. What’s to stop a numerically superior sect from making truly onerous laws like legalized slavery or the like?

DeToqueville called this Tyranny of the Majority, and it is the reason we have a Constitution which is (theoretically) the supreme law of the land. The Declaration of Independence framed the Constitution by saying “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” Unalienable being the key word there, meaning tese rights cannot be infringed upon no matter what. Though if enough people want something, a super majority can pass an ammendment to the Constitution. But there hasn’t been a new ammendment passed in over 30 years.

I live in Ohio – do I want to live with wacky California political decisions? (Note that this is why we have an electoral college instead of just a popular vote).

Partially true, but this is something that I think the federal government is in violation of the Constitution–the Tenth Amendment says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or
to the people.” Yet the federal government has continuously created federal laws where they have no right–the state’s should be free to decide anything not explicitly stated in the Constitution. For example, the fed witholding highway funding unless a state complies with their speed limit mandates.

While the idea of allowing everyone to vote on everything and seems intriguing, I think the biggest threat is general apathy of the people. Look at how horrible voting rates are right now. Consider if people had to vote all the time, they would probably drop even more, especially for things people don’t understand (like the DMCA). On an issue like that, maybe 5 or 10% of the population would vote, that’s just scary–because it means that an active few could probably get their view passed. The flipside is scary too–thinking about if a lot of people actually do vote, for most of them, they won’t really understand the issue and go on a whim–or worse yet, Disney sends everyone a free movie with a plug to vote for a DMCA like law. Granted Disney buys votes now, and that’s a problem too, but eventually campaign finance reform has to happen right? And I guess it’s a matter of the old “better the devil you know.”