Compulsory Voting Australia is Well-Known for its Compulsory Voting Laws

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by Matt Rosenberg

Updated March 03, 2017

Over twenty countries have some form of compulsory voting which requires citizens to register to vote and to go to their polling place or vote on election day.

With secret ballots, it's not really possible to prove who has or has not voted so this process could be more accurately called "compulsory turnout" because voters are required to show up at their polling place on election day.

One of the most well-known compulsory voting systems is in Australia.

All Australian citizens over the age of 18 (except those of unsound mind or those convicted of serious crimes) must be registered to vote and show up at the poll on election day. Australians who do not show up are subject to fines although those who were ill or otherwise incapable of voting on election day can have their fines waived.

Compulsory voting in Australia was adopted in the state of Queensland in 1915 and subsequently adopted nationwide in 1924. With Australia's compulsory voting system comes additional flexibility for the voter - elections are held on Saturdays, absent voters can vote in any state polling place, and voters in remote areas can vote before an election (at pre-poll voting centers) or via mail.

Voter turnout of those registered to vote in Australia was as low as 47% prior to the 1924 compulsory voting law. In the decades since 1924, voter turnout has hovered around 94% to 96%.

In 1924, Australian officials felt that compulsory voting would eliminate voter apathy. However, compulsory voting now has its detractors. In their Fact Sheet on Voting, the Australian Electoral Commission provides some arguments in favor and against compulsory voting.

Arguments used in favor of compulsory voting:

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  Voting is a civic duty comparable to other duties citizens perform (e.g. taxation, compulsory education, or jury duty).
  
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  Parliament reflects more accurately the "will of the electorate."
  
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  Governments must consider the total electorate in policy formulation and management.
  
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  Candidates can concentrate their campaigning energies on issues rather than encouraging voters to attend the poll.
  
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  The voter isn't actually compelled to vote for anyone because voting is by secret ballot.
  

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  Some suggest that it is undemocratic to force people to vote and is an infringement of liberty.
  
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  The "ignorant" and those with little interest in politics are forced to the polls.
  
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  It may increase the number of "donkey votes" (votes for a random candidate by people who feel that they are required to vote by law).
  
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  It may increase the number of informal votes (ballot papers which are not marked according to the rules for voting).
  
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  It increases the number of safe, single-member electorates - political parties then concentrate on the more marginal electorates.
  
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  Resources must be allocated to determine whether those who failed to vote have "valid and sufficient" reasons.
  

"The case against compulsory voting"

In political matters, often the strongest case for a change in habitual arrangements is precisely that they are habitual and any change will, by shaking up the system, promote change for the better.

Thus there are strong arguments in favour of voting on a proportional representation and on a first-past-the-post system, but any system which has become customary will have acquired its barnacles and rust and have begun to be subject to abuse; the great advantage of a change is that it will disrupt the arrangements of the professionals who have learnt how to abuse the system.

The arguments for compulsory voting are, in essence, that it imposes a civic duty upon the citizens of a democracy, and that it serves to educate them by bringing them regularly to perform that civic duty. These, if true, would be quite strong arguments.

However, the reality is that the system of compulsory voting is favoured by both the major political parties because it enables them to economise on an important element of campaigning: it obliges their loyal voters, however apathetic, to turn up to vote the party ticket without the parties having to spend anything on persuading them or on transporting them to the polling booth as happens in democracies where voting is optional. Thus it favours the established parties who have a large traditionally loyal constituency, as against minor parties and independents whose followers are likely to be much more enthusiastic.

It has also been favoured by the Labor Party especially, which sees itself as depending in part on a large number of not very literate supporters who need to be chivvied to the polls and then presented with simple instructions as to how to vote. (It is notable that it is the Labor Party which has introduced or supported such measures as optional preferential voting, the possibility of voting easily for a party ticket in the Senate rather than having to fill out a long sequence of preferences, and the acceptability of a simple mark rather than a number as indication of voting preference.)

The nature of the Labor constituency is, however, changing, and it may well be that Labor is underestimating both the literacy and the intelligence of its voters. The donkey vote is a declining source of support.

But both parties have an interest in having their supporters forced to the polls through the apparently independent mechanism of the electoral law. Moreover, they have tried to make it difficult to vote deliberately informal as a protest, and have misrepresented informal voting as a product of incompetence rather than deliberate decision.

Compulsory voting has taken an even uglier form in recent times with the amendments to the electoral law in late 1992 which made it illegal even to advocate an informal vote; this is at present under challenge in the High Court as incompatible with the right of free political speech which the court has found to be implicit in the Constitution.

The mere fact that compulsory voting has been so widely embraced by the current party system (with the exception of South Australia where a recent attempt to abandon it was blocked with the help of the Australian Democrat members of the Upper House) is itself a good argument for changing it. Anything which might shake up the parties and make them more concerned with the support of the community and their supporters rather than with the perpetuation of the extremely undemocratic and elitist preselection systems as at present, would seem to be beneficial.

However, there are more fundamental reasons for objecting to compulsory voting. One is essentially a civil liberties argument. One of the worst features of totalitarian or oppressive regimes is that it is necessary to take an interest in politics under them, either as a result of coercion into official demonstrations and so on or in order to contest their power. Surely it is a fundamental human right to be left alone, to be allowed to live one's own life within the law but otherwise unmolested, and to take no interest in policies at all except by choice. Compulsory voting, by imposing participation in the election of politicians and governments, infringes the right to be apolitical.

Ideally in a democracy a person should be free to participate in the electoral and political process whenever he or she wishes to, and to ignore it equally without having to account to government or courts. Just as the right to free speech entails the right to silence, so the right to vote must imply the right to abstain, even from registration and turnout.

Beyond this, it is arguable that it debases the democratic process to coerce people into participating in it. There are many issues which concern only activist minorities and in which there is no reason to engage those who do not care greatly what the outcome of the debate might be. Compulsory voting, by forcing the uninterested to vote, ensures that the process and outcome of the vote will be informed by considerations which are much less rational than appropriate and encourages the offering of bribes to the electorate.

Thus just as ancient Rome pacified its citizens with distributions of free bread and the provision of circuses and games of ever-escalating scale and cruelty, so the same tendencies can be seen in modern Australia where social security dependency has been increasing steadily and where free broadcasting of violent sporting events has become government policy. This is clearly designed to appeal to unthinking but enfranchised plebs who are forced to the polls.

By contrast there are strong reasons for leaving the vote in elections to those who actively wish to exercise it, and at the same time leaving it to them, individually or through their political parties, to encourage and persuade their fellow citizens to exercise it also.

To me it seems a gross violation of my civil liberties and those of others that we should be forced to vote for a party or a candidate no matter how loathsome they may all be or that, even worse, we should be prohibited from advocating, in these circumstances, a deliberate informal vote or an abstention. Compulsory voting has become a conspiracy of the establishment against the free exercise by the citizenry of their civic rights.

Padraic M^cGuinness is a columnist with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

"I don't believe in compulsory voting. In particular, I don't believe that political journalists should vote and I pay the fine after each election. Some politicians won't let you interview them if they know which way you have voted." - Derryn Hinch, TV Presenter

Army Sgt. George Scheufele filled out an absentee ballot in Baghdad while voting in the 2004 U.S. presidential and congressional elections. Scheufele said the military's voter-registration drive made it easy for him. (By John Moore -- Associated Press)

Washington Post Staff Writer

Time was when soldiers, if they wanted to vote, had to request ballots by snail mail, fill them out and return them the same way.

The process typically took weeks.

This year, thousands of soldiers around the world have the opportunity to vote in the Nov. 7 elections by e-mail. It's part of a Pentagon effort to make it easier for overseas military personnel to cast ballots in federal and state elections, and it reflects how the Internet has changed life in the combat zone.

But computer security experts inside and outside the government warned that the Pentagon's Federal Voting Assistance Program ignores the risks associated with unencrypted e-mail: interception, hacking and identity theft.

"E-mail traffic can flow through equipment owned and operated by various governments, companies and individuals in many countries," Joel Rothschild, a Navy Reserve captain, said in an August report prepared for the Pentagon. "It is easily monitored, blocked and subject to tampering."

A separate report by four outside computer security experts released last week raised similar red flags and added that the use of unencrypted e-mail for registering overseas voters invited identity theft.

"No bank would ask their customers to send Social Security numbers over unencrypted e-mail," said the report's co-author, David Wagner, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Berkeley. But that is what the system allows, he said.

Rothschild's report noted that e-mails can be encrypted to reduce tampering risks. Pentagon officials said states would need to arrange for that provision.

States have options for getting ballots to and from voters. They can fax, e-mail or mail the ballots, or use a combination of the methods. The federal government began the use of faxed ballots in 1990, with troops stationed in the Persian Gulf for Operation Desert Shield. E-mail is an option in those states that allow it; at the moment eight do. Mississippi was the first, allowing troops overseas to vote by e-mail in a 2003 gubernatorial election.

Neither the Pentagon nor state officials say they track how many of the 294,000 military personnel overseas are voting by e-mail. That information is held at the county level, state elections officials said.

Anecdotally, the number of military personnel voting by e-mail appears limited.

In Colorado, Jefferson County elections official Shawna Weir said she has received three ballots that soldiers sent by e-mail. The service members -- two in Iraq and one on a ship -- e-mailed their ballots to a federal facility in Virginia, which then faxed them to the county.

They were all "very eager to vote," Weir said, noting that they had called her to make sure they could get their ballots.

The combination of faxing and e-mail "is about as dangerous as you can get," Wagner said. "It's got all of the problems with unencrypted e-mail, plus your ballot is being routed through the Department of Defense. Will soldiers feel free to vote their conscience when they know that the DOD may be able to see how they voted? How do we know that the DOD or their contractors haven't modified soldiers' ballots in transit?"

J. Scott Wiedmann, deputy director of the Federal Voting Assistance Program, said the operators at the federal facility cannot alter e-mail content, which is sent in "read-only" format. Voters are also encouraged to mail in an original copy of their ballot as a backstop, he said.

Soldiers faxing and e-mailing their ballots also must sign waivers saying they understand that somebody might see their ballot, Wiedmann said. "There's no U.S. constitutional guarantee to a secret ballot," he said.

Joni Ernst is a county elections official in Iowa and a major in the Iowa Army National Guard who served in Iraq from 2003 to 2004. She delivered mail to the troops and saw how long it could take, so she is glad that soldiers have the e-mail option. Most every camp has an Internet cafe for soldiers, and if the voting process is simple, she said, the troops are more likely to vote.

"Their time is very limited," Ernst said. "We don't want to detract from the mission. But we want to make sure their vote counts."