Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of the book and illustrates the key features that render Australia’s experience of compulsory voting distinctive. These include the longstanding nature of the system; its being embedded in the nation’s larger tradition of precocious innovation and ready experimentation when it comes to electoral institutions and practices; the fact that Australia is alone in embracing compulsory voting among the Anglophone democracies to which it typically compares itself; the strict enforcement of compulsory voting combined with a whole raft of procedures to facilitate voting; its consistent unambiguous success in achieving high rates of voter turnout; and, finally, the sustained and widespread public support that the practice has enjoyed.
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Notes
- 1.
Compulsion is also common, if not universal, at the level of local government elections in Australia. See Orr (2019, p. 271).
- 2.
An illustration of the variability in estimates of the number of countries with compulsory voting can be found in respective studies by Sarah Birch (2009) and Ian McAllister (2011). Birch put the figure at 29 whereas McAllister identified 19 (see Birch [2009, pp. 1 and 36] and McAllister [2011, p. 20]). More recently, a 2018 report by the Commonwealth Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiring into the 2016 federal election stated that ‘Australia was one of only 27 countries in the world that practices compulsory voting’ (JSCEM 2018, p. 53).
- 3.
Compulsory voting also exists in a single canton in Switzerland, Schaffhausen, with the practice having been abandoned in other Swiss cantons in the 1970s.
- 4.
Much of the information in this paragraph is based on Birch (2009) complemented by data found on the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance website (https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/voter-turnout/compulsory-voting).
- 5.
It should be noted, however, that it is compulsory to register to vote in New Zealand.
- 6.
These turnout figures for national elections in Australia are for the House of Representatives (the lower house of the Commonwealth Parliament). They are obtained from the Australian Electoral Commission, which is the independent statutory authority that manages Australia’s electoral system and administers national elections. See, https://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/federal_elections/voter-turnout.htm. The comparative international figures are sourced from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/voter-turnout.
- 7.
For a discussion of this subject, see Pringle (2012). It should also be pointed out that ‘attending a polling booth’ should not always be understood in a literal sense. Postal voting and hospital mobile polling, for example, are ways in which Australian citizens can comply with their legal duty to vote without actually attending a polling booth.
- 8.
This is based on the AEC’s own information on compulsory voting (see, https://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Publications/voting/files/compulsory-voting.pdf) as well as its submission to the JSCEM’s inquiry into the 2016 federal election (JSCEM 2018, pp. 56–57). See also Orr (in this volume).
- 9.
The Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 disenfranchised Indigenous Australians. 1949 legislation granted the right to vote in national elections to those Indigenous Australians who had served or were serving in the armed forces or who were entitled to vote in their states (i.e. New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria, but not Queensland and Western Australia). In 1962, Indigenous Australians were given the right to vote in national elections irrespective of their entitlement under state law. A distinction based on race remained, however, since it was optional rather than compulsory for Indigenous Australians to enrol to vote. This was not rectified until 1983.
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Acknowledgements
Most of the chapters included in this edited collection were originally presented and discussed at the workshop ‘A Century of Compulsory Voting in Australia: Genesis, Impact and Future’, held at Monash University on 5–6 June 2019. The editors would like to thank the School of Social Sciences at Monash University which provided funding to support that event.
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Bonotti, M., Strangio, P. (2021). Introduction. In: Bonotti, M., Strangio, P. (eds) A Century of Compulsory Voting in Australia. Elections, Voting, Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4025-1_1
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