Citizens' Accountability in Popular Votes

Popular vote processes are often understood as mechanisms that set ordinary citizens as legislators, because they enable voters to take part in decisions on policy issues. However, these actors act outside of accountability constraints for their voting decision. This has raised concerns about the democratic legitimacy of the policy decisions made in popular votes, and served to justify the preservation of conventional representative systems. In this paper, I argue that this argument cannot be used as an objection to popular vote processes without also dismissing elections, for the lack of accountability of voters is common to all events of mass voting. I then specify that voters are not the only actors bearing responsibility in the result of popular votes, but that they bear a degree of individual responsibility for casting their ballot in a certain way. I close by suggesting that, even if they lack accountability mechanisms for voters, systems including bottom-up popular vote processes can encourage voters to use their power in more responsible ways than conventional representative systems.