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The United States is often held up as the laboratory of democracy, with good reason. Yet, even as the infant American republic was pioneering radical and revolutionary change, on the other side of the world the beginnings of an evolutionary, yet every bit as profound, democratic laboratory was being founded.
The founding of a British penal colony at Sydney Cove might seem the unlikeliest of places to be a laboratory of democracy. Especially when it fell victim to a brief military coup within decades. Yet, many important civil innovations were first tested in Australia.
The parole system, for instance: beginning at Norfolk Island in 1840, prisoners could gradually earn (or lose) more and more liberties while still serving their sentence. Secret ballots were long called the “Australian ballot”, being introduced in Australia in the 1850s. While New Zealand just beat out Australia in extended the vote to women, women in Australia could stand for election 20 years before their Kiwi sisters. Australia was also an early adopter of preferential voting.
And, exactly 100 years ago, Australia did something even New Zealand is still arguing about: it introduced compulsory voting.
Australia is alone in embracing compulsory voting among the Anglophone democracies to which it typically compares itself. The electoral systems of Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States are all based on voluntary voting.
It should be qualified, of course, that it’s exactly compulsory to vote for anyone in Australia. Technically, it’s compulsory to register to vote when eligible to do so and to collect and lodge a ballot paper at election time. What you do with the ballot paper – fill it in correctly, refuse to fill it in, or just draw a dick on it – is up to you. A ballot lodged but not filled out correctly becomes an “informal vote” and is not recorded. Still, even absent compulsion, few Australians vote informally: the highest percentage recorded (not coincidentally, perhaps, in disenchanted 2022) is under sic per cent.
Some years ago, an expatriate American acquaintance remarked that, when she first gained Australian citizenship, she was affronted by the idea of compulsory voting. Over time, though, she said, she came to appreciate its value in guaranteeing high voter turnout.
Compulsory voting has been consistently and unambiguously successful in achieving high voter turnout. Though there’s been a slight downward trend in turnout at the past five national elections (it hit a low of 90.5% in 2022), it hasn’t fallen below 90% since the adoption of compulsory voting a century ago.
This is about 30% higher than the recent average turnout in countries with voluntary voting. It’s also well above the recent average in countries with compulsory voting systems.
And far higher than, say, the UK, where voter turnout was just 52 per cent this year. At the 2020 presidential election, voter turnout of 60 per cent was a century high, up from just over 50 per cent in 1980.
The public has strongly and consistently backed the practice. Evidence from more than half a century of opinion polls and election study surveys shows support hovering around the 70 per cent mark.
Perhaps the most singular aspect of the nation’s experience of compulsory voting, however, is how seemingly impregnable is the practice if measured by its durability, the dearth of controversy over it, the consistency of its enforcement by authorities, and the way citizens have dutifully complied with and supported it. Together these things make Australia an exemplar of compulsory voting internationally.
Former Howard government minister Nick Minchin was adamantly opposed to compulsory voting, arguing that “an essential part of a liberal democracy should be the citizen’s legal right to decide whether or not to vote”. Minchin ignores that, as pointed out above, Australians aren’t technically forced to vote for anyone.
Yet, despite opposition from some politicians, Australians remain pretty happy with compulsory voting. As former PM John Howard admitted, “As I move around the country, I don’t get people stopping me in the street and saying, ‘You’ve got to get rid of compulsory voting.’”
Compulsory voting, it is argued, makes Australian democracy fairer.
It […] produces a socially even turnout.
Compare this to the situation in this month’s United Kingdom election. Turnout is estimated to have slumped to a record low 52%. There was a clear pattern of the “haves” exercising much greater say at the ballot box than the “have nots”.
Those who stayed away from the polls were predominantly less well-off, non-homeowners, the young, the lower-educated, and of minority ethnic background.
Compulsory voting, it’s argued, imposes a moderating influence on politics. By ensuring that voter turnout is not skewed toward passionate partisans at the extremes, it means that governments are not encouraged to make extremists the chief focus of policy.
In contrast the USA’s hodge-podge of state-by-state voter laws, which can and have been tweaked to favour one party or another, Australian elections are administered by an independent national electoral authority, the Australian Electoral Commission.
The AEC’s trusted impartial administration of the electoral system lends integrity to the democratic process. So do the many procedures it manages to facilitate voting. To name a few: Saturday election days, assistance for the ill, aged and those from non-English-speaking backgrounds, mobile polling stations, postal, absentee and early voting, and active and regular updating of registration.
Indeed, Australia has been described as “the most voter-friendly country in the world”.
That doesn’t mean we have to like the bastards we vote for.
