Moral Conflict in Electoral Deliberation: Assessing the Efficacy of Voting Aids on an Irish Referendum

This paper tests the efficacy of utilising a voting aid in order to embed the benefits of deliberation within a wider voting public. Specifically we test whether a statement such as those derived from “ citizen initiative reviews” (CIR) can impact voters who did not themselves participate in the official pre-referendum deliberative phase. This experiment was implemented in advance of the 2018 Irish referendum on blasphemy, which was one of a series of social-moral referendums conducted in Ireland following the recommendations of a deliberative assembly of citizens — The Irish Constitutional Convention (2012-14). This is the first application of a CIR-style voting aid in an Irish context, and also the first to be applied to an issue that is principally a moral or symbolic question. We find that both the key findings of the Convention and the statements for and against the removal of Ireland’s blasphemy ban have significant impacts not only on empathy and understanding but also on vote intention.