When deciding how to vote, people will use mental shortcuts. political scientists call these shortcuts as

Heuristics

Explanation:

Mental shortcuts or Heuristics is a mechanism that is used by the scientists to describe the decision making process of human beings. Often people tend to ignore some information in favor of small bits of information that they have encountered. This process might be conducted consciously as well as subconsciously. Voters tend to use these mental shortcuts which are also known as heuristics to make voting decisions on the basis of the small details or information that they have received over a period of time while discarding other information on the same matter.