A century ago this month, Australia legislated for compulsory voting in federal elections.* The anniversary hasn’t drawn much attention; I doubt that I would have noticed it were it not for an article yesterday by Paul Strangio in the Conversation. It’s certainly worth marking, but in my view it’s not something to celebrate.
The topic has come up here before. Back in 2019 I looked at Judith Brett’s book Democracy Sausage, with its catalogue of pioneering Australian reforms, and had this to say:
These other measures have all been adopted in other parliamentary democracies – most of them quite quickly. But compulsory voting has not, even though it was introduced in Australia in 1924. Why have other countries not followed suit? Do they perhaps know something that we don’t?
It’s true that Australia’s electoral system was state-of-the-art in the 1920s. But it’s equally true that we are clearly no longer a world leader. Our last major reform was the introduction of proportional representation for the Senate in 1948. The one real innovation since was group ticket voting in 1984, which proved so undemocratic that it was abolished in 2017.
In the rest of the world, compulsory voting is mostly associated with authoritarian regimes. It was a staple in the Communist world, which regularly reported turnouts of the order of 99%, and its main home today is in Latin America, where it is a hangover (although often not enforced) from the era of strongman rule in the early twentieth century. Other current exponents include Singapore and Turkey; apart from Australia, the only liberal democracy on the list is Luxembourg.
It’s far from clear why we should take any pride in being in this company. As I pointed out five years ago, we have long given up our leadership in the electoral reform stakes – such measures as lowering the voting age or giving voting rights to permanent residents attract little interest here. And alone among the innovations of which we were justly proud, compulsory voting has not drawn imitation from the countries with which we naturally compare ourselves.
That would be less of a concern if our democracy was obviously functioning better than any of theirs. But that’s a difficult argument to maintain. We are by no means the worst of the bunch, but we are no shining example either. Strangio claims that “Australia has been less receptive to the aggressive conservative populism that has taken root in the United States and Europe,” but this is not obvious either: far-right parties won about 12% of the vote in the last federal election, similar to the European average, and in addition their supporters have colonised the Liberal Party.
It’s true, as Strangio also points out, that we do a good job at making it easy for people to vote, and it’s possible that some of that would not have happened without compulsory voting. But it’s hard to believe that we would now scrap any of those measures if we got rid of compulsion. And Strangio’s belief (widely shared) that turnout is equally good whether it’s voluntary or coerced strikes me as bizarre. Civic engagement is a great thing, but why would anyone think of people who only show up to avoid a fine as “engaged”?
The danger of compulsory voting, which Strangio does not mention, is that it focuses electoral strategies on a small group of low-interest and low-information voters. With voluntary voting, parties have to spread their efforts more widely; they can’t take their own supporters for granted, because they have the option of staying home. When turnout is more predictable, it’s much easier to ignore all but the target group of swinging voters.
Adding single-member electorates creates a toxic combination. Those in marginal seats get all the attention, and especially those among them whose votes can be swayed by sensationalism and trivia – just the sort of people who, without compulsion, might not bother to vote at all. While we pride ourselves on orienting the policy debate away from the extremes, our alternative is no improvement. (Preferential voting mitigates the evil a little, but that in no way depends on compulsion.)
Equally serious, perhaps, is the way that compulsion subverts the whole conversation about civil liberties. When something that should be cherished as a precious right is reconceptualised as a duty, something important has been lost. Compulsory voting is not just a symptom of Australia’s disregard for human rights but also, in its small way, a cause.
Strangio is right, however, to say that there is no prospect of a change. Like many features of our electoral system (public funding being probably the most obvious one) it is there not because it’s popular or because it promotes democracy, but because it suits the politicians. Compulsory voting saves them a great deal of work and allows them to pretend to a degree of public support that they do not really have.
The periodic discussions about who gets the political advantage out of compulsory voting are missing the point. Our leaders don’t just have partisan interests, they also have common interests as politicians, usually at the expense of the public. This is one of them.
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* Cue here the usual responses from those who say that there is no obligation to vote, only to attend at a polling place. To which the answer is (a) it’s not true: section 245 of the Electoral Act clearly says that “It shall be the duty of every elector to vote”; and (b) it would be completely irrelevant even if it were true.
The World is Not Enough 
In addition to compulsory voting and public funding, single member electorates in the House of Representatives is locked in place because it suits the interests of the major parties.
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Yes, very true!
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PR in the Reps would enable far leftists like MC-M, Shoebridge and JS-J to hold my party (ALP) to ransom over socialist fetishes like nationalisation or demand support for the “peace movement” — pacifism has always been — to me — pure cowardice and fear cloaked in utopian moralism and will only mean more Rwanda’s and Bosnia’s.
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I’m afraid I’ve never had much time for that argument: the extremists are only powerful if the mainstream majority won’t work together to defeat them. In which case they’re the ones that should get the blame.
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I don’t have strong views one way or the other about compulsory voting. My feeling is that its benefits aren’t as great as its champions say and that its drawbacks aren’t as great as its critics say. You point out (correctly) that it’s an unusual but not unique system (although you seem to have missed the examples of Belgium and Greece, which Wikipedia tells me are in the same general category as Luxembourg: that is, all three have penalties for non-voting which in practice are not, or no longer, enforced). Then you suggest that the reason it continues in Australia is because it suits politicians. That seems plausible enough on the face of it, but if it were a large advantage for politicians then it would be reasonable to expect that politicians in more countries would have adopted it: which makes me think that if it does have advantages for politicians, there’s no big advantage. Perhaps it’s not so much that it generally advantages politicians as that (which is not quite the same thing) Australian politicians in particular have become habituated to it?
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Thanks J-D – I had thought that in Luxembourg (unlike Belgium & Greece) there was some enforcement, but I see that (as you say) Wikipedia denies that. Its source is ten years old so it’s possible there’s been some change, but doesn’t seem likely.
Why have Australia’s politicians succeeded in securing themselves this benefit but other countries’ haven’t? That’s a very good question. My guess is that it’s for much the same reason that we’re about the only place without a bill of rights: countries that have had to free themselves from tyranny or foreign occupation of one sort or another are much more wedded to political liberties. The idea of voting as a duty rather than a right would therefore meet a lot more resistance there. But there may be other cultural factors at work, or it could be just chance.
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