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That, indeed, may be all that is required. In Switzerland, whence California imported the idea, the initiative process works well. In some of the other 23 American states that practise some variant, it works better than in others. So the problem is not direct democracy as such, or even the initiative process, but the details of its Californian variant. It needs to be fixed, not eliminated.
The main goal of reform must be to make the initiative process and the legislature work together, rather than against each other. That is the only way to stop what Bruce Cain at Berkeley and Roger Noll at Stanford call the “downward cycle of legislative failure and initiative reaction”. The idea is to allow and encourage dialogue in law-making—between voters and the legislature, and among the special interests.
One option is to encourage referendums and to discourage initiatives. Referendums, by passing popular judgment on acts of the legislature, do not subvert representative democracy but hold it accountable. Initiatives, which are themselves legislation, can damage representative democracy. California would not be in its current mess if referendums, not initiatives, had become the main expression of direct democracy in the past century.
Initiatives should not only be rarer but also shorter, argues Bob Stern, the president of the Centre for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. Their language should be simpler, so that more voters understand what they are deciding. As in Switzerland, the legislature should get a first look at any draft and be allowed to respond with its own alternative, or to refine the wording.

A. 어휘
practise 실행하다. variant 변종. fix 고치다. eliminate 제거하다.
interests 이익집단. referendum 국민투표. subvert 顚覆(전복)시키다, 멸망시키다.
legislation 법률제정, 立法(입법). damage 損傷(손상)시키다.
representative democracy 代議民主主義(대의민주주의).
current 현재의. mess 혼란, 困境(곤경). legislature 의회, 입법기관.
alternative 代案(대안). refine 다듬다, 精製(정제)하다.
wording 用語(용어), 말씨.