Reflective not Reflexive

Students who were shown fleeting glimpses of candidates and were asked to judge which looked the most competent were shown to correlate with election results 2/3rds of the time, according to studies by Toderov et al (2005) and Benjamin & Shapiro (2007). This was presented in "Nudge" as evidence that voters make automatic and instinctive decisions about politicians and, generally speaking, don't reflect or deliberate much. I suggest that those instinctive reactions have evolved to be particularly important in judging people, their moods, likely behaviours or social connection. It's an animal response.
Interactive Democracy asks people to judge policies separately from candidates. I hope it would have some success at encouraging people to be reflective rather than reflexive.

Voting Decisions?

How do you decide who to vote for? How do you make that decision?

Do you rule out parties that have let you down in the past?

Do you rule out politicians that have been dishonest?

Do you choose the manifesto you like? Do you still vote for that party if you like most of it but strongly disapprove of one or two policies?

Do you vote based on the leadership qualities of the prospective PM?

Do you support a party because they're the people you have most affinity for, regardless of anything else?

Do you condemn a party for what it did 20 years ago?

Do you vote based on how the policies are going to effect your wallet?

Do you vote tactically?

Do you merge all these concepts together and vote for who you feel will be best?

Or do you give up on the task and let others decide?

Within the Interactive Democracy system you would need to judge the quality of the candidate and the team that could form the government. But you could vote separately on individual policies as they arise in the course of the parliament. In short it would separate out a vote based on candidates and votes on individual policies (after a specific debate on those issues).