It has been dubbed the "Invisible Referendum" and by the time this is printed its fate will have been decided. How it will have been decided is the problem. Votes will have been cast by people with little or no understanding of what the referendum is about. Many will have been surprised to find themselves being asked to decide on this issue at all and will have been reduced to flipping a mental coin.
A friend of mine was travelling by taxi a week ago and, inevitably, the conversation turned to matters political. The driver was laudably positive about the European election and was thoroughly convinced it was his duty to vote. My friend mentioned the referendum. "Jaysus, I didn't know that was going on, what's it about." It was explained to him. "Ah well, I'd have to vote `no' on that one, I wouldn't want to give them crooks any more power."
I mention this encounter because it demonstrates a key problem.
The information campaign has clearly failed. The Referendum Commission expended £750,000 on advertising explaining the constitutional change proposed and making the arguments for and against it. The Taoiseach has made statements supporting a "yes" vote. And still it has sunk without a trace.
Our taxi driver's reaction demonstrates that this need not have been the case.
This referendum is not about a small tinkering with the constitution; it is about the power of the local authorities, about how they will be administered and how much more seriously they will have to be taken in the future. People do care about their county councils, urban district councils and corporations even if they don't think about it in quite that way. Their concerns are more straightforward. They want their refuse collected, their drinking water to be the right colour and pollutant-free and their roads to be roads and not resemble the surface of the moon.
Everything went wrong.
Starting with the idea that running three polls at once was a good idea. We have difficulty enough getting people focused on one set of issues when it comes to a general election. Here we asked the public to get to grips with the future of the European Union, issues like a common defence policy, the democratisation of the Commission, the real power being wielded by our MEPs.
And then we threw a swathe of local issues at them. Halting sites, landfills and the like. This combination of macro and micro-politics was always going to prove problematic. So we added the 20th amendment to the Constitution to the mix. Too much information and too many ideas for us to expect almost any citizen to stay on top of.
And then there was the nature of the information to be communicated on the referendum. In its raw form Article 28A is couched in legalese; in terms of comprehensibility it might as well have been written in a foreign language.
The Referendum Commission did its best to translate it and did a reasonable job for the information leaflet. Except for the fifth clause, the translation of which was: "This section would appear to permit the continuation of the present position whereby a local authority may fill a casual vacancy in its membership such as one caused by death, resignation, etc, without holding a by-election." In other words even the Referendum Commission itself wasn't sure what this clause was supposed to mean.
So we had a relatively incomprehensible message to be transmitted to a population suffering information overload. It would be vital to get the transmission right.
The information leaflet I mentioned would have to be posted to every home in the State. After all, the Referendum Commission had been tipped off that people weren't paying attention by the abysmal response to their advertisements seeking submissions on the proposed changes. Right?
Nothing was posted to the voters.
A comprehensive advertising and public relations campaign would have to be mounted. Because of the short time-frame involved, - the terms of the referendum were only announced on May 12th - more effort and resources would have to be devoted to this process than was used to create awareness during the more leisurely Amsterdam Treaty campaign. Right?
The spend on ads was £750,000 compared with £2.3 million for Amsterdam.
But the spend on an information campaign is not always an indicator of its effectiveness. A clever methodology can get around the need to burn up millions of pounds of taxpayers' money. Research has demonstrated that 80 per cent of people get 80 per cent of their information from the electronic media - radio, TV and so on. So we got a smart campaign using the relatively cheap air time available at local radio stations, TV ads placed in a minimum number of key viewing slots, an internet website full of useful data . . . Right?
Full page ads in the national and local papers.
Even then, with something as important as a change to the Constitution, the media would cover the issue comprehensively. Right from May 12th opinion pieces on the pros and cons would litter our newspapers. Radio and television would be filled with vigorous debates and ongoing updates on the significance and meaning of the planned changes. Right?
In the last week or so we've had some recognition of the existence of the referendum, mainly in the form of tut-tutting about the lack of information, an occasional snapshot poll, sporadic vox-pops and no real debate on the issues.
So, all day yesterday we had people in polling stations wondering what to do about this referendum. Voters equipped with little or no information and a few seconds to make up their minds. How they react will be fascinating.
Will they heed the maxim "don't sign anything you haven't read"? Will they get justifiably annoyed at having this dumped on them? Will they react with the customary Irish "what are you getting at?" suspicion? Or will they just ignore it?
We shouldn't be too surprised with a result which falls short of expectations.