As is increasingly the case as the referendum date approaches, federalists are attacking the process rather than debating the questions to be asked of Albertans on October 19. Jared Wesley and Ken Boessenkool put their heads together and wrote a piece for The Line explaining why, in their view, Albertans should not be able to initiate or vote in referenda.

They said, “'Letting the people decide’ sounds nice in theory, but it simply does not work in practice for three reasons: scale, complexity, and stability.”

The thing is, though, direct democracy has been working very effectively in practice in other jurisdictions for generations. As a small, landlocked state, Switzerland provides an excellent example of this.

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The scale argument is the strongest-sounding and the weakest in practice. No serious model of direct democracy asks citizens to decide cybersecurity protocols, procurement contracts, or interest-rate settings. Switzerland never pretended otherwise. What citizens vote on are statutes and constitutional rules that have already been drafted, debated, and published. The daily work of government remains representative and bureaucratic.

That is why the Swiss state does not grind to a halt. If anything, the referendum threat changes behaviour before the vote. Officials consult more widely. Laws are written with an eye to surviving a public challenge. The “thousands of decisions a day” problem is solved the same way every large democracy solves it: by delegation. Direct democracy is reserved for the decisions that define the regime.

Alberta’s set of questions is admittedly messy and confusing in parts. They were written by the government rather than citizens. But that’s a design failure, not a disproof of the instrument.

The complexity argument assumes that direct democracy requires every voter to become a specialist. It does not. It requires voters to choose among framed alternatives after parties, media, unions, business groups, and the government have spent months arguing. The complexity case is one made by academics to say they feel citizens are too stupid to be trusted with direct input on government decisions without outright saying it. This is just the top-down style of elitism that direct democracy shuns. This is why Wesley and Boessenkool revile it.

The stability argument doesn’t hold water either. Switzerland is one of the oldest, most stable and most prosperous democracies on the planet. If empowering citizens to directly participate in democracy were a formula for instability, Switzerland would have shattered into factions and dysfunction generations ago.

Direct democracy is not a replacement for government. It is a reason government has to keep explaining itself. It forces public discourse on issues and puts accountability into the laps of legislators.

Alberta’s direct democracy system has room for improvement, and that can be done. Models exist around the world where direct democracy mechanisms exist and are successful. As it stands, the province is nearing the end of an extended campaign, and it's well beyond the time to discuss whether citizens should have the right to initiate and participate in referenda.