Compulsory Voting - The Australian Anachronism
By Ian Farrow

Introduced in the 1920s, at the apogee of what has been termed the ‘Australian settlement,’ compulsory voting should properly be considered alongside other relics of that era such as tariff protection, industrial arbitration and the White Australia policy. While compulsory voting remains largely unchallenged by the electorate, it is doubtful that Australian society would have quietly accepted its introduction in the late 20th Century.

Compulsory voting is certainly not the democratic norm. However, few Australians would be aware that its practice is confined to relatively few countries and that the trend internationally, particularly since the demise of totalitarianism in Eastern Europe, has been strongly in favour of voluntary voting.

Compulsory voting is almost unique to Australia, with a couple of countries (Luxembourg and Belgium) being the only others that make a serious effort to enforce compliance. If compulsory voting was as sound a practice as many of its defenders assert, one would think that other countries might be moving to adopt it. Yet no other countries appear to be moving to adopt compulsory voting. In almost every other democracy the trend has been away from compulsion.

The proposition sometimes advanced that voter turnout in Australia would revert to the 1922 voter turnout levels of below 58 per cent if compulsory voting was abolished is highly questionable. While the 1922 Federal Election was a low point for voter turnout, the 1917 Federal Election had a turnout of over 78 percent. One of the reasons sometimes cited for the decline in voter turnout at the 1922 federal election was the change in the voting system in 1918.

Australia before the Second World War was also a vastly different country – economically, socially and politically. In particular, the population was more widely dispersed and governments exercised far less influence on the lives of Australians than they do today.

The Australian ballot

A phrase sometimes used by the Opposition parties in opposing legislation that provided for a voluntary election for delegates to the 1998 Constitutional Convention was that it was a derogation of the ‘Australian ballot.’ The ‘Australian ballot’ has nothing to do with compulsion – the term had often been used to describe the pioneering Australian use of the secret ballot in the late 19th Century. The Australian ballot was, of course, voluntary.

The pre-Federation Constitutional Convention elections in the 1890s and the subsequent referenda to federate the six Colonies were conducted using voluntary voting – albeit with restrictions on the franchise. After Federation, nine Federal elections, two of the eight successful referenda that have changed the Constitution and the two national plebiscites on the issue of conscription were conducted using voluntary voting. The defenders of compulsory voting have never questioned the legitimacy of these ballots.

Would Australians vote?

Defenders of the Australian status quo frequently cite low voter turnouts in the United States, but they routinely ignore high voter turnouts in the many other countries that have voluntary voting, particularly other parliamentary democracies. Voter turnout in the United States is adversely affected by unique factors, including the frequency and multiplicity of elections, the weakness of party organisations and the gridlock often caused by the rigid separation of powers. New Zealand, which it can reasonably be argued has a close cultural similarity with Australia, had a voter turnout of 88 percent at the 1996 election with voluntary voting. Malta, albeit a small country but with an ordinal voting system like Australia’s, had the highest voter turnout of any country in the world in 1996 – over 97 percent, with voluntary voting (Mackerras and Smiley 1997).

The 1996 Australian Election Study Survey asked voters if they would have voted if voting had not been compulsory. Some 68 percent responded that they ‘would definitely have voted’ while another 19 percent responded that ‘they probably would have voted.’ This result is remarkably similar to the actual voter turnout figures normally achieved across the Tasman.

Partisan advantage?

Malcolm Mackerras and Ian McAllister contended in their paper to the American Political Science Association that:

It is perhaps predictable that the proposal to reintroduce voluntary voting is perceived by some to be a narrow partisan position. Akin to what usually occurs before elections, when political parties strive to claim ‘underdog’ status, it seems that both sides of politics may try to claim that they would be disadvantaged by the reintroduction of voluntary voting. Voluntary voting has certainly not prevented governments of varying political persuasions being elected in any of the other major democracies.

Rather than being regarded as a means of achieving partisan advantage, there are some who contend that voluntary voting would be to the detriment of the Liberal Party. One Liberal functionary (Poggioli 1996) has
asserted that:

Aside from a lack of confidence in their ability to out-campaign the labour movement, the key concerns expressed by an element of the Liberal Party organisation were that voluntary voting would lead to a decline in taxpayer funding, that it would force changes in campaign activities and would require the expenditure of resources in safe Liberal electorates. Further concerns were that voluntary voting would change attitudes to voting, that the Liberals would need to radically change their campaign message and that it would have implications for elderly electors as a key element in the Liberal demographic.

Despite the questionable legitimacy of the taxpayer funding of political parties, and in light of the fears of some Liberals that voluntary voting would create a revenue shortfall, the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (1997) proposed a solution that would base the taxpayer funding on the total number of electors enrolled, rather than those who voted. This proposal, advanced by the Coalition majority on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, was clearly intended to allay concerns in the Liberal Party organisation that the reintroduction of voluntary voting would deplete their taxpayer funding.

Making political parties work

The concern that voluntary voting would mean that political parties would need to campaign in their safe electorates is one of the strongest cases in favour of its reintroduction. During an election campaign the political parties largely ignore voters in the safe electorates. The safe electorates receive most attention from the political parties during internal party preselections, otherwise the actual election outcomes are generally regarded as predictable. Safe electorates in the Federal Parliament, while sometimes blessed with talented representatives, are also rich sources of taxpayer funding awarded on the basis of each first preference vote, and votes cast in Senate elections.

The complaint that voluntary voting would mean increased costs to political parties associated with the need to mobilise voters, is code for laziness and insecurity. Concerns about increased campaign costs to political parties should be largely irrelevant to the issues associated with voluntary and compulsory voting. Elections should exist for the benefit of electors rather than the elected. Political parties in the other major democracies seem able to cope with voluntary voting and do not advocate the introduction of compulsory voting.

Changing the political culture

One of the justifications for the introduction of compulsory voting, also sometimes cited in its defence, is that it encourages citizens to become informed about politics. Yet it would be difficult to assert that after more than 70 years of compulsory voting that this has been a success.

The reintroduction of voluntary voting in Australia would certainly create a dramatic change in the way the political parties operate. Political parties would need to focus their efforts on both safe and marginal electorates, and they would need to motivate electors to support them, rather than oppose their opponents.

In particular, it would be hoped that the level of policy debate would be raised, since the political parties would probably spend more resources detailing their policies rather than simply attacking those of their opponents. Advocates of change, whether in the taxation system or in Australia’s constitutional arrangements, might also have a greater chance of success with the reintroduction of voluntary voting.

Compulsory voting is not used in other institutions

Notably, political parties that strongly defend compulsory voting do not practice it for their internal ballots. One might imagine that the ballot within the Australian Democrats to fill the Senate vacancy created by the defection of Cheryl Kernot would be reasonably important. Yet this internal ballot was conducted by means of a voluntary, preferential, postal ballot – a system similar to what the Democrats had spent months opposing for the election of delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

Compulsory voting is not practiced in other institutions in Australia. The Annual General Meetings of companies and the deliberations of trade unions are all conducted using voluntary voting. Nobody has ever seriously suggested that company Annual General Meetings should have compulsory participation, and there has generally been little enthusiasm within the trade union movement to make voting in their internal elections compulsory.

Best practice

Australia once led the world in democratic best practice in the early post-Federation years, with central features such as the secret ballot and a rapid adoption of universal suffrage. These features have been adopted in all of the major democracies. Compulsory voting, however, has not been adopted by any of the major democracies or any of the English-speaking democracies.

One of the features of Australian politics is that politicians are usually extremely reluctant to change any system under which they were elected. It is political inertia, combined with party organisational fear and voter passivity, that remain the bulwarks of the silent-movie era relic that is compulsory voting.

Australia’s relative geographic isolation and a general lack of interest in affairs of state, particularly in electoral mechanics, have helped to ensure the survival of compulsory voting as an Australian anachronism. Through compulsory voting, Australian political parties have been able to use the law to do what in virtually every other democracy the political parties themselves must do – namely, maximise voter turnout at elections.

References

Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters 1997, Report of the Inquiry into all aspects of the conduct of the 1996 Federal Election and matters related thereto, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra.

Mackerras, M. and I. McAllister 1996, Compulsory Voting, Stability and Electoral Bias in Australia, paper prepared for the American Political Science Association meeting, August-September, San Francisco.

Mackerras, M. and R. Smiley 1997, Three October 1996 Week-end Elections, paper prepared for the Conference of the Australasian Political Studies Association, Flinders University, September-October.

Poggioli, P. 1996, Voluntary and compulsory voting, document circulated by the Victorian Division of the Liberal Party.

Ian Farrow works for the oil industry.

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