IT'S ENTIRELY UNDERSTANDABLE that once a referendum has been held, and the result digested by the general public, there is little attention paid to the final report of the Referendum Commission which oversaw its conduct.
But at the outset of the next referendum campaign it's worth going back over the report of the previous Commission, which ran the public awareness campaign for the ballots on abolishing the Seanad and setting up the Court of Appeal.
That was the last time the public went to the polls in a vote on changing the Constitution - and, like this time, two questions were asked on the same day.
After the poll, the Commission hired Behaviour & Attitudes to carry out a nationwide poll to discuss the conduct of the referendums and determine whether everyone knew exactly what was going on.
This is one slide from what they found.
The outcome here ought to be worrying for... well, everyone.
55 per cent of respondents said that, to some degree, it was difficult to figure out exactly what the ballot paper on Seanad abolition was asking them. 47 per cent expressed similar concern about the Court of Appeal ballot.
Everyone involved admits that the phrasing of the Seanad question last time around was tricky. The question being asked of voters was whether the approved of an amendment to abolish the Seanad - so a 'Yes' vote means 'I approve of the proposal to abolish the Seanad'. But in the minds of 13% of Yes voters, 'Yes' actually meant 'I want there to be a Seanad'. Similarly, 6% of 'No' voters said they were voting No because they didn't want the Seanad to exist. But the circumstances there are unique, and voters were being asked to vote Yes to a question phrased in the negative.
In the ballot on the Court of Appeal question, where there was far less ambiguity about the question, 47% of voters said they were confused about the question - which was a straightforward 'Do you want to set this thing up?'.
I'll repeat it: the outcome ought to be worrying for... well, everyone.
'Previous Commissions have...'
It was certainly worrysome for the Referendum Commission. Their final report included the following paragraph - the highlighting is mine:
The Commission also recommends that the referendum process be reviewed to ensure that it conforms to international standards such as the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) Code for Good Practice on Referendums (March 2007). Previous Commissions have also recommended this. This is particularly the case in the light of the reported confusion in relation to the ballot papers.
That report was issued in November 2013, about six weeks after the ballots were held. That report is 17 months old. The law dictating the design of the ballot papers... has not been changed.
"Previous Commissions have also recommended this."
Two of the five members of that Referendum Commission - the Clerk of the Seanad, Deirdre Lane, and the Comptroller & Auditor General, Seamus McCarthy - still hold their offices and are now members of the 'new' one.
Today the assembled press asked, at some length, whether the Commission believed there would be any cause for concern.
Your #marref ballot paper, ladies and gents pic.twitter.com/Oi968Lak42
— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) April 13, 2015
We were told: No. The ballot papers are fairly self-explanatory. They're different colours. [They were different colours last time, too.]
In fairness, the Commission's independent guide for every home will include copies of the ballot papers so people will know how they look, and will have a chance to figure out which box they should tick depending on their motives.
I humbly pointed out that the Dáil, aside from approving the wording of the referendums, also approves a statement 'for the information of voters'.
Shouldn't this be included on the ballot paper, I suggested? I added that the previous Commission (two of whose members were sat at the top table) had identified that 9% of Seanad voters actually voted the wrong way. The new chairman, Justice Kevin Cross, politely suggested that this would not be an issue this time around, because the question (unlike the Seanad one) is not being put in the negative.
Referendums are serious business and should be treated as much by voters - and in all honesty, having witnessed so many referendums in recent history, every voter should now be up to speed with the principle that Yes is a vote for change, and No is a vote for keeping things as they are.
But when roughly half of all voters say they're confused by a ballot paper, it's evidently time for some extra measures to be introduced. The Referendum Act of 1994 - which outlines the precise, robotic, mechanical formula for designing ballot papers - can't be changed in time for the next ballots, but it can be changed in time for the ones that come after.
Between then, all we can do is trust the learned members of the Referendum Commission that this time around, when voters receive two near-identical ballot papers with only a passing mention of their individual subject matter, people have suddenly become much wiser than they were a mere 18 months ago.
Not sure I can agree with the Referendum Commission - I think this ballot paper design is just asking for confusion: pic.twitter.com/vlJ1aXZ6LT
— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) April 13, 2015
Assuming the new Commission issues its final report at the same speed as its predecessors, we should have its final conclusions within the first two weeks of July.
I wonder whether, after the completion of that, there'll be any comment about the design of the ballot papers...
