I think that this is a great public forum topic: it relates to a current event that will educate students on some of the nuanc
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Lesson 4.2 Day 3
| 13NFL1-Compulsory Voting Page 69 of 163 www.victorybriefs.com BEFORE AUSTRALIA’S COMPULSORY VOTING LAWS, PROPERTY-OWNERS WERE OVERREPRESENTED AT THE POLLS – EVIDENCE FROM THE VICTORIA PROVINCE PROVES. Anthony Fowler – 2013 Department of Government, Harvard University. Electoral and Policy Consequences of Voter Turnout Evidence from Compulsory Voting in Australia Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2013, 8: 159 –182. After his election to the Victoria State Assembly in 1877, Robert Clark, a working-class miner, requested a report of voter turnout by property- ownership. To my knowledge, this is the only Australian electoral return which provides any breakdown of turnout by demographic characteristics. The report presents turnout data for 37 of Victoria’s 55 districts. These 37 districts contained 580,000 residents and 170,000 eligible voters. For most of the missing districts, the election for legislative assembly was uncontested, so no votes were cast. At that time in Victoria, property-owning males were automatically registered to vote. If anon- property-owner wanted to register, he would have to pay 1 shilling. The property requirement was not severe 59 percent of voting- age males were automatically registered as property-owners. This group included farmers, masons, shepherds, storekeepers, butchers, and gentleman Non-property owners included strictly working-class citizens such as laborers, servants, cooks, and gardeners. The 1877 report presents for each district the approximate number of eligible voters, the number of registered property-owners, the number of registered non-property-owners, the number of voters who were property-owners, and the number of voters who were non- property-owners. From these data, we can back out the proportions of eligible property-owners and eligible non-property-owners who turned out in the state election. Alarmingly, only 18 percent of eligible non-property- owners turned out to vote compared to 66 percent of property-owners. Given the burden of registration, only 32 percent of eligible non-property-owners bothered to pay the shilling and get on the roll. Even conditional on registering, only 57 percent of those individuals turned out. Surprisingly, property- owners were more likely to vote than even the subset of non-property-owners who had paid to become registered. Put another way, property- owners comprised 84 percent of the electorate even though they only comprised 59 percent of the eligible voters. Download 2 Mb. Share with your friends:
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