Political Deference, Cognitive Disability, and Voting Advice

Voting advice applications (VAAs) have inspired considerable normative reflection in political theory over the past decade (e.g., Anderson and Fossen 2014, Fossen and Anderson 2014) beyond empirical research on their effectiveness and their mechanisms of shaping voters’ preferences (e.g., Tromborg & Albertsen 2023, Stadelmann-Steffen, Rajski & Ruprecht 2023). But could and should they be used to overcome challenges of participation for voters with cognitive disabilities? This paper argues for a qualified positive answer, relying on normative research on supported voting (Khorasanee & Carter 2021, Mraz 2023) and on deference to others’ political judgments (van Wietmarschen 2018, Lillehammer 2021, Brinkmann 2021, Peter 2023). First, I review what kinds of deference VAAs facilitate. VAAs guide voters on what are the relevant grounds of electoral decisions (e.g., which issues matter for them, on and what kind of reasons one could and should decide on these issues). Further, VAAs guide their users from these premises, in conjunction with their users’ own convictions, to practical judgments about whom to vote for. In both functions, VAAs represent and apply cognitive authority to which users defer (Peter 2023). Second, I argue these forms of deference to cognitive authority are unobjectionable for voters without cognitive disabilities only if deference is limited in a particular way. VAAs are characteristically developed based on incomplete, reasonably contested expertise. I that regard, they are not different from other sources of information that voters rely on, including political parties, NGOs, or their own near and dear. Acts of cognitive deference to these sources are part of democratic life where voters make complex decisions that should integrate various kinds of knowledge and expertise. However, because the expertise VAAs apply is subject to reasonable disagreement, the appropriate kind of deference is limited. Namely, VAAs should be taken as sources of advice supplying additional (perhaps weighty) reasons to consider who to vote for—rather than as pre-emptive authorities that exclude the consideration of further reasons beyond the judgement of the authority (see Raz 1986, Peter 2023). Thus, whether the use of VAAs is objectionable crucially depends on the kind of deference—i.e., the epistemic attitude to VAAs that voters can and do assume. Third, given the above, I explore the kind of support VAAs can provide to voters with cognitive disabilities in realizing democratic values. For some such voters, VAAs may provide accessible support to better understand their own convictions and synthesize information necessary to make an informed electoral decision. This raises hopes that the use of VAAs might be an effective partial remedy for the low participation rates of such voters in absolute (Boman & Rosenberg 2024) and relative (Mraz 2023) terms—and hence their underrepresentation. However, for those voters who are incapable of merely treating VAAs as advice, i.e., who would exhibit the wrong kind of deference, VAAs would not support the exercise of their political agency. In their case, the use of VAAs may be not only unhelpful but also objectionable on political egalitarian grounds.