Deliberative approach to the design of voting advice applications

Among various new procedures and tools which intervene in electoral communication and invite citizens to reflect more profoundly on candidates and parties’ programs before voting, online voter guides are widely accessible. These internet applications compare candidates and parties by presenting their responses to standardized questionnaires. They often also allow users to determine the similarity of their opinions to the ones of candidates and parties. While questions in questionnaires vary across applications, designers of voting guides and experts usually formulate them. The impact of voting advice applications, including the choice of questions, on voting behaviours is discussed in connection with polarization and other aspects of opinion formation (Holleman, Kamoen et al. 2016; Garzia and Marschall 2019; Munzert, Barber et al. 2020). Inspired by experiments in deliberative electoral communication (Ackerman & Fishkin 2004; Charles, Sokoloff & Satullo 2005), our study poses a question of how deliberation leading to the formulation of questions to candidates and parties could modify the perceived usefulness of online voter guides, usually offering citizens a predetermined set of cues. In particular, we are going to explain (1) to what extent the young users feel that questions posed to politicians and parties represent their concerns and information needs and (2) if deliberation among persons of different social and economic backgrounds can result in creating a list of questions which will increase the sense of representation across the groups. Our research (to be completed in February-April 2024) involves targeted recruitment of 48 people aged 18-25 representing various regions of the country, voters and nonvoters in elections in 2023, in the subgroups of the primarily studying, primarily working, and neither studying nor working. The recruitment will include collecting answers to filtering questions indicating worldviews and the level of political activity. The participants will be divided into four internally diversified and externally similar groups. Supported with the information from creators and implementers of two platforms the 'Electoral Lighthouse' and 'I Have Right to Know' and experts, first, they will evaluate existing questionnaires and then propose their own. In the next step, all groups will vote on the same list of new questions by prioritizing them. Organizations supporting both platforms will add the most highly ranked questions to the questionnaires before the upcoming European elections. The research procedure will conclude with two open questions about the participants' experience. The overall analysis will include the group discussions, the voting results, and pre- and post-deliberation questionnaires.