Simplifying Partisan Political Opinions in Referenda: Voting Aids for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities

Research on the political competence of persons with intellectual disabilities remains sparse, often outdated, and lacking in systematic analysis. Importantly, no empirical study has ever conclusively demonstrated their alleged political incompetence. Yet, the presumption of incompetence - never empirically established - has historically justified, and continues to justify, restrictions on voting rights. This paper addresses two major gaps in the literature. First, it provides an evidence-based assessment of the political competence of individuals with intellectual disabilities in the context of Swiss direct democracy. Second, it examines how linguistically simplified political materials affect their political competence. These objectives are closely intertwined: the ability to express political competence, and ultimately to make autonomous political decisions, depends on the broader context in which citizens operate. Among the external conditions shaping political autonomy, whether voters are provided accessible information plays a decisive role. This issue is especially pressing for citizens with intellectual disabilities. The originality of this paper lies in both its empirical analysis of the political capabilities of persons with intellectual disabilities and its participatory design: political representatives collaborated in producing simplified short videos presenting their political views within the context of one federal and one cantonal referendum in Switzerland, while persons with intellectual disabilities verified the accessibility of these materials. The utility of these short videos on improving the political competence of a sample with varied intellectual capacity was then tested through semi-structured interviews. The sample for the interviews was recruited from the beneficiaries and collaborators of a local institution that provides support to people living with intellectual disabilities, with a total of 47 participants across two phases of the study. The semi-structured interviews measured participants’ political competence through an assessment scale inspired by Appelbaum et al’s (2005) Competency Assessment Tool in Voting (CAT-V). The results for each participant across the two phases (both when they watched the simplified short videos and when they didn’t) were compared to measure whether these videos increased participants’ political competence. We also compared the results of the participants with and without intellectual disabilities to control for any significant difference in competence across the two groups. By reassessing the political competence of persons with intellectual disabilities, this paper reopens broader debates on the scope of the electorate, the conditions of access to it (especially regarding single-issue votes in direct democracy), and the minimal competencies - if any - that should be required of citizens.