Some people who planned to vote no during the referendum on marriage (22 05 2015) without distinction of sex (gender) have said that they had no representation among political parties on this subject. That is, they noted that while they and (as it turned out) 3 of every 8 people who voted chose no, all the political parties had encouraged people to vote yes.

Representation

We ordinary people do not get to vote on legislation. One or 3, 4, or 5 TDs represent each of us in the Dáil, and there the TDs vote for or against each Bill. A substantial part of the time the TDs misrepresent the people or misrepresent some of the people in their constituency.

Senators are not directly elected, except for the 6 from the university constituencies. So people say that the Senate misrepresents the people a lot of the time.

As we can not vote on legislation, we need legislators to represent us.

Referendum

In the referendum, a voter gets to vote directly on the proposed change. The proposed change has always been about the Constitution.

In a referendum, you vote on the proposed change. You represent yourself. The ballot is secret. You do not have to vote in the way that the government speakers, or any other politicians, tell you. At the marriage referendum 3 of every 8 people ignored the politicians. At other referenda even more people have not voted as the politicians told them.

You do not need a person or a political party to represent you during the campaign leading up to the day of the vote in a referendum.

Trouble with politicians and referenda

That politicians would take a role in leading or directing the votes of the people in referenda has caused trouble.

The Constitution rules that any change to it requires the vote of the people. This is because the constitution is a set of rules that limit the laws that the Dáil and Senate can pass, and limit the way the Government and its departments administer the law. The limits are generally to stop the State from infringing the basic rights of the people. Accordingly there is sense in changes to these limiting rules being only with the approval of the people.

Government ministers and other politicians often give their views on the most sensible way to vote, and this means to vote yes. Their opinions are not necessarily more sound than anyone else’s view, but if most of the Dáil thought that a No vote was the most sensible, they would be unlikely to hold a referendum.

So politicians campaign to the people in most referenda, to vote yes. People have become used to this, and they partly identify the referendum or the campaign or debate with the politicians. Governments have on some occasions campaigned strongly, and on 2 European integration referenda have given us the vote a second time to get us to change from No to Yes.

It was right that people became annoyed at the Dáil and Senate sending us the vote a second time. Some people have thus come to see a referendum as a thing that the politicians foist on us the people, instead of a rare opportunity to vote directly on an important issue.

Some people have compounded the identification of a referendum with the political parties by changing their vote at the next general (sometimes local) election away from the parties that called the referendum. Some people have treated some referenda like a general election, that is, an opportunity to vote against the present government.

Thus politicians have been too involved in the votes in referenda. In response some of the voters have pushed back at the politicians. This was quite fair when voting in elections. But ordinary people pushing back at politicians by their vote in a referendum has greatly damaged those voters’ concept of the rare vote that you can make directly, in a referendum. These pushes reinforce each other and make them stronger, a vicious circle.

Valuing the direct vote of a Referendum, and not needing representation

While any voter may consider some or even most referenda a mistake or a waste of time and money, some subjects reserved to the vote of the people in a referendum are really important aspects of our society or our State on which it is wonderful to vote.

If you plan to vote in one way, and you see that all the political parties have favoured the opposite vote, it is natural to feel a little more alone. Yet I think that the view, of hoping that some politicians would support the vote that you plan to make in the referendum, is a mistake. The view of identifying the attitudes of politicians with the issue to be decided in a referendum is a product of the unproductive mutual pushing by the politicians and the people as I wrote in the last section.

My impression of the campaigning in the referendum for equality in marriage is this. Although the political parties stated clearly that they favoured us voting Yes, and they all had posters on lampposts, they did little further campaigning. I saw more Yes posters from the organisations for equality and for LGBT rights than from the parties. The No posters were fewer than the Yes total, but nearly as many as the political party Yes posters. Nearly all the person-to-person and media campaigning was from groups with specific interests in a No vote or in a Yes vote. Thus the campaigning in this referendum was little to do with politicians.

I was very glad to hear Micheál Martin TD who leads Fianna Fáil tell the interviewer on RTÉ Radio 1 at lunchtime on Sunday 24 05 2015 that there is no need for political parties to be on each side of a referendum vote.

So, most important in a referendum is that you represent yourself. It is a better state to represent yourself than to have someone represent you (they often misrepresent you).