Direct democracy, where the wolves devour the sheep. They did manage to change the way Senators are elected.
Republic: An armed sheep
That happened because the Big Four out in California, d/b/a the Central Pacific, later Southern Pacific Railroad, literally owned the California state legislature and didn't care who knew it.
They even corrupted U.S. law by getting an activist, railroad-promoting AJ to go to the activist, railroad-promoting Clerk of the Supreme Court, while the CJ was confined to his bed by terminal illness, to insert in the syllabus of a decision about tax powers (involving Central Pacific and a California county) the novel doctrine that corporations, as artificial persons, enjoy all the rights -- all of them -- that real people do. Which has never been legislated or even debated, just slipped into, not the opinion, it was never a holding or even dictum of the Court, but just the syllabus.
Now that is runaway corruption. People felt they had to do something to stop the Big Four and other plutocrats from stealing or arrogating everything in sight.