One of my close friends who is very smart and well educated voted in favor of one of the CO ballot initiatives in '06 because the way the description was written at the voting booth it read to her in the heat of the moment as being something that she agreed with - she had not done independent research before hand because she wasn't aware that the initiative was going to be on the ballot.  It is just too easy to confuse people and these initiatives when summarized aren't always as advertised.

Then you have the anti-gay marriage type inititatives which play to base emotions and are in conflict with American constitutional principles.

The question of whether something is "democratic" is actually too broad.  We have a brand of democracy and a democratic system that we've established which is built around a representative government.  Cherry-picking issues that the people get to weigh in on while leaving others to legislatures is exactly the kind of thing that can be easily manipulated by a hand full of puppet masters.

The good thing is that most of their initiatives fail. The bad thing is that fighting them sucks up enormous resources that could be spent elsewhere.