If Voters use VAAs to Select Candidates, do they need to see the Names of Candidates? The Blind Election Device for tackling Electoral Discrimination

The paper explores a tension in democratic theory that concerns the discrimination of candidates from minority groups by voters belonging to a dominant group. Its focus, thus, is one key democratic right: the right of citizens to run for political office. While no one can claim the right to be elected, how should we deal with the phenomenon of electoral discrimination, that is, when voters belonging to a majority group (e.g., the white people) systematically support only candidates from their group and refuse to vote for candidates from minority groups (e.g., the black people)? Such patterns of voting behavior might result in massive statistical underrepresentation of minorities in parliament and, thus, could undermine the very legitimacy of democratic institutions. To tackle the problem we need to focus on institutional reforms, and especially the electoral system design, that could indirectly reduce the impact of discriminations in elections. The paper proposes one such reform – the “Blind Election device” – that (purportedly) does not undermine the central democratic principles and yet allows to remove the impact of people’s conscious and unconscious biases that influence the discriminatory patterns of electoral behavior. It consists in screening off the names of candidates, in a way to make it impossible for voters to discriminate against minority groups by relying on heuristic cues provided by candidates’ names. In a milder version of the device voters would make their first selection of candidates by relying only on candidates’ political profiles. In the second step the names of selected candidates would be revealed and at that point voters would be able to make their final selection. While such a device might have appeared purely utopian only a decade ago, the increasing use of Voting Advice Applications in Western democracies makes it a realistic option. Its implementation, however, might shake the normative foundations of contemporary democracies.