A conscious vote?

 An ABC reporter declared that, for the vote on legalising euthanasia, the Queensland government was conducting ‘a rare conscious vote’. I remember commenting before on the decline in frequency of the word conscience from a high in the early 1800s to a low in the 1980s. There has been a slight improvement in its profile on Google Ngram but it is still comparatively low.  Perhaps we are less familiar with the word and the idea of the conscience these days.  It does seem that, while a certain number of conscious votes are evident on Google, sometimes in conjunction with the word conscience (which is odd), the conscious vote is still a marginal error.  Perhaps the term conscience vote, misheard as conscious vote, has not been analysed into its parts and related to conscience.  It makes for some amusing offerings in the news.  Should the National Party be allowed a conscious vote? Is that possible?