Beyond Endorsements and Partisan Cues: Giving Voters Viable Alternatives to Unreliable Cognitive Shortcuts

Voters often rely on cognitive shortcuts and partisan cues under low-information conditions. But it would be preferable for voters to adopt deliberative cues so that their low-information vote at least follows the judgements of similar high-information voters. One such deliberative cue is the Oregon Citizens Initiative Review, where citizen panels exhaustively review policy initiatives and report their findings for voters. When exposed to documents produced by the panels, readers become more informed voters and can use their new knowledge to make independent voting choices, rather than relying on judgmental shortcuts and voting cues.