Compulsory Voting: Activating the Demos and Enhancing Procedural Democracy in Australia

Abstract

This chapter argues that compulsory voting significantly enhances the legitimacy of Australian democracy by ensuring that it optimises the values of procedural democracy. For proceduralists, a political system cannot be legitimized unless the process that establishes it is itself legitimate. In ‘authentic’ electoral democracies, it is vitally important that electoral procedures are duly complied with for the result to be deemed legitimate. The five criteria for judging whether this has occurred are: ‘political equality’, ‘effective participation’, ‘enlightened understanding’, ‘final control of the agenda by the demos’ and ‘inclusiveness’. Compulsory voting, as it is practised in Australia, is better at fulfilling these standards than almost every other comparable voluntary-voting system due to its ease of use and access, capacity to deliver high and socially even turnout and tendency to inspire a more informed, alert and critical public. It also produces two desired effects: greater levels of equality and lower levels of corruption. It is argued that, in order to enhance democratic legitmacy, the ‘inclusiveness’ criterion should be more demanding to ensure that the entire demos not only has the right to vote but actually votes.