Yes, participation is a difficult thing to ensure in a democracy, and even more so when it's online. A few years ago, I was a member of the German pirate party. We tried to implement "liquid democracy", using Liquid Feedback. It allows every party member to vote on anything or delegate their votes (based on categories, subcategories or single initiatives) to any other voter, and change those delegations at any time.

Because of the known security problems with digital voting systems, the system was supposed to work only as a tool to form opinions. Initiatives were then put to final vote in real-life assemblies, where everyone was allowed to participate. We didn't have any "classical" delegates.

Both of these steps posed their challenges in participation:

- Liquid Feedback was not the easies tool to understand and use. For non-technical people, it was quite the challenge. And of course, a computer in the first place.

- Full member real-life assemblies, particularly on a national level, require time and money for travel, accommodation etc. Because we didn't have "real" delegates, if you couldn't afford to go, you were out.

There were some suggestions to overcome these issues (like a "permanent assembly" which would work by postal -snail mail- vote), but that never came to pass. (Or at least I think it didn't, I moved out of the country since then and don't follow that closely anymore.)