Disrupting Politics Part I - For the People, By the People

No. A representative in a representative democracy is not a simple aggregation of the wills of the people they represent. A representative is chosen to bring their own judgment to the questions the collective group faces, while balancing that judgment with the desires of the group.

This is important because (as any software product manager will tell you) people don't always know what they want. They may think they do, but maybe they're confused, or they only know part of the story. Sometimes two things they think they want conflict with each other. The job of the representative is to sort through all those impulses and then make an informed decision about what policies will get the group closest to the group's overall priorities.

You would be surprised if you go out and talk to voters on a given election day how many of them will say to you "I disagree with Candidate X's position on <issue I care about>, but I'm voting for him anyway because I think he's a good person." What they're saying is that they trust the candidate's judgment, and that's more important to them than how the candidate stands on a checklist of issues.

This may seem naïve, but it's actually what makes representative democracy different from direct democracy; you're not voting on an issue, you're placing your trust in someone you believe in to speak for you on it.