Voting and the Scottish referendum: perspectives of people with intellectual disabilities and their family and paid carers

Abstract

Voting is a human right for every citizen yet many people with intellectual disabilities do not vote or have little support to exercise their right to vote. This article explores views on the wider aspects of voting against the backdrop of the Scottish referendum using focus groups involving people with intellectual disabilities (n = 12), family carers (n = 7) and paid carers (n = 5). Findings revealed that people with intellectual disabilities had similar concerns to the general population about the referendum. Regarding voting, all groups identified the need to discuss issues and for practical support and accessible information to ensure informed choices were made when voting.

Keywords:

• Focus groups
• people with intellectual disability
• voting
• family carers
• paid carers

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all service users, carers and staff from ENABLE Glasgow.

Notes

1. Sixteen year olds were given the vote in the Scottish referendum (where the Scottish people voted against independence from the rest of the United Kingdom). The Scottish government is looking at reducing the voting age to 16 years across the electoral process.

2. Further information can be found on the Electoral Commission (2015) website.

3. We have used the term ‘intellectual disability’ throughout this article because it is the universal term rather than ‘learning disability’ (a UK term), which although preferred by people with learning disability in Britain can cause confusion in the rest of the world because it can be taken to mean dyslexia.

4. F = focus group, ID = intellectual disability, FC = family carer, PC = paid carer.

5. Unless specified, the term ‘carers’ is used within the findings to denote both family and paid carers in order to avoid repetition of the term ‘family and paid carers’ throughout the article. When the two groups displayed differences, they have been referred to specifically.

6. The party logo alongside the name is the norm in Scotland.