Although these pranks are funny they highlight a something very serious - the failure case of direct democracy. When minor issues come up for vote not everyone cares. The people who do care enough to vote can easily be trolls. As an example, imagine that a vote comes up for raising tolls from $1 to $2 on little used street. It's one of 1000 votes a month in a direct democracy. There's little chance of getting attenti…
Another problem with direct democracy is consistency. In one vote the people will overwhelmingly support a constitutionally mandated limit on taxation. Then in the next vote they will overwhelmingly vote in mandatory ring fenced high spending on health care, education, etc, etc with automatic inflation-busting increases every year.
This is why you need a government with the power to govern, because someone has to be able to make the trade offs between different and changing demands and priorities that one-off, single-issue referenda can't make.