When was compulsory voting introduced

Information recently provided by the Australian Electoral Commission to South Australian Senator Nick Minchin shows that a not inconsiderable number of Australians have been prepared to go to gaol rather than be compelled to vote - over 40 following the Federal Election. Apart from matters of principle, the choice between compulsory or voluntary voting is also influenced by partisan concerns.

General impetus to a nascent or renewed debate on compulsory voting has come in recent years with the Liberal Party's Federal Council decision to support voluntary voting. The paper outlines the history of compulsory voting, examines the position in other democracies, discusses the arguments for and against its retention and looks at how it has operated in Australia. The effect of abolishing compulsory voting on the two major parties is difficult to predict with any degree of certainty.

The effects on the National Party, the Australian Democrats, the Greens and smaller political parties and independents are also hard to gauge. The conventional wisdom is that compulsory voting benefits the ALP. This view appears to be reflected in the positions adopted by the parties.

However, in many instances, local and regional factors are likely to be of considerable importance. Compulsory voting is a distinctive feature of the Australian political system. Periodically it becomes a matter of controversy and discussion. It persists as a matter of interest as it raises issues of political principle and has a practical impact on the electoral system and on political and campaign practices. Australia is unusual in having had compulsory voting for most of its political history as a nation.

This is frequently commented upon negatively by opponents of compulsory voting. However, compulsory voting has seemingly had general acceptance by the community. The issue arouses strong debate, as some members of the Liberal Party in particular, present strenuous arguments against its retention. In recent years a concerted effort has been made to abolish compulsory voting. Since voluntary voting has been part of the Liberal Party's Federal Council's policy and in the Liberal Government in South Australia tried unsuccessfully to abolish compulsory voting.

This paper examines the history of compulsory voting and its operation in Australia and discusses a number of the arguments for and against. The paper also considers political participation in some countries where voting is voluntary. Part one outlines the history of compulsory voting in Australia and places it in the context of Australia's electoral system with particular regard to compulsory registration and other provisions of electoral law facilitating the right to vote.

Such provisions include postal and absentee voting, enrolment of itinerant voters and in more recent times the criteria for formality. Compulsory voting was first introduced in Queensland in by a conservative government and became part of Commonwealth electoral law in The remaining states and territories in due course followed Queensland and Commonwealth practice.

It now applies to all elections and referenda. Part three considers the arguments in favour of compulsory voting and against its abolition. These arguments are considered in the context of the desired characteristics and functions of an electoral system.

Normative questions about democracy, fairness, equity and the degree of access and participation necessarily arise in this context. The proponents of compulsory voting seek to counter the view that compulsion is incompatible with individual democratic freedoms. They assert the democratic significance of voting and the duties incumbent upon the citizenry to participate in democratic processes. The benefits of a high level of electoral participation are manifold.

High turnout under compulsory voting enhances social cohesion and inclusiveness in the political debate, ensures that the influence of pressure groups, money and extremism are constrained.

Compulsion also contributes to ensuring that election campaigning remains focused on issues rather than on trying to persuade people to vote. Thus the character of political campaigning can remain less subject to the alleged banners, bunting and balloons syndrome of United States politics. Part four presents the arguments against compulsory voting and the arguments in favour of its abolition. The major argument is the incompatibility of compulsion with individual freedoms in a democratic society.

Other arguments are that Australian practice differs from that of most of the rest of the world, that it contributes to a general political laziness in the community, especially for political parties and that ensuring compliance with the requirements of compulsory voting is an unnecessary expense. A further argument, not always stated explicitly because of its elitist nature, is that the lazy and indifferent members of society cannot make informed electoral choices and thus ought not be compelled to vote.

Part five considers whether there are particular benefits to any group resulting from compulsory voting and assesses who might benefit if compulsory voting were abolished.

This part also includes some analysis of the long term as well as the short term consequences of abolition and considers the effect on the body politic as well as on the active practitioners. The paper discusses the significance and some of the causes of voter turnout in these countries.

Attachment A - Turnout and informal voting statistics for each Commonwealth and State election in Australia from to The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected.

To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case. Compulsory voting should be seen in the context of the achievement of political rights and democratic government in Australia and as an element of the history of Australian electoral law. Part of the heritage of English Chartism in Australia, as historian Robin Gollan pointed out, was the campaign for universal suffrage.

This was accompanied by the determination that Australia should not be re- created as a replica of the Old World and should instead avoid such conditions and inequities in pursuit of a new social vision. The extension of the franchise, the abolition of property qualifications and of plural voting were a fundamental part of popular reformist programs.

Plural voting was an electoral arrangement whereby some people could vote more than once in more than one electorate and it was usually associated with a property franchise. The principle was that those who held property in an electorate were enabled to vote in that electorate. The more real property an individual held the more votes he could cast. Both those with institutional political power and those seeking access to it recognised how essential was the right to vote.

The political arguments of the emergent working class rested heavily on the importance of the establishment of fair and open electoral machinery. Audrey Oldfield, author of a recent book on women and the right to vote, in writing of the battle for female franchise described something of the intellectual context of the Australian debate:.

Settled in the aftermath of the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Australian colonies gained self- determination at a time of Liberal ascendancy in the Western world. Australian Liberals were, on the whole, enthusiastic about the Chartist concept of manhood suffrage, but fearful of how it might work out in practice.

Like John Stuart Mill, they believed that in government 'though everyone ought to have a voice, that everyone should have an equal voice is a totally different proposition. The philosophical concern with brakes on democracy was reflected in colonial Constitutions.

All had bicameral legislatures with Upper Houses either appointed or elected on a high property franchise with higher property qualifications for candidates. The battle to extend the franchise was essential to the movement by the Australian colonies towards self- government. With the movement for extension of the franchise went the campaign for the secret ballot. In male suffrage was introduced in South Australia for the House of Assembly.

In Western Australia manhood suffrage with limiting residential qualifications was given in In Tasmania property qualifications were not completely removed until Women gained the vote in South Australia in , and in Western Australia in Upper houses were elected on a more restricted franchise, and plural voting was also permitted.

Plural voting was debated at the Constitutional Conventions held to draft the Constitution for the Commonwealth.

It was agreed at the Australasian Federal Convention in Adelaide in and confirmed in Sydney in that plural voting should be prohibited. Accordingly, sections 8 and 30 of the Constitution prohibit plural voting in elections for both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Section 7 of the Australian Constitution provides that Senators for each State will be chosen directly by the people of the State, and section 24 provides that the members of the House of Representatives are to be directly chosen by the people of the Commonwealth.

Section 9 provides that the electoral law for choosing Senators must be uniform for all States. It was left to the Commonwealth to determine its franchise, within the parameters set by section No adult person who has or acquires a right to vote at elections for the more numerous House of the Parliament of a State shall, while the right continues, be prevented by any law of the Commonwealth from voting at elections for either House of the Parliament of the Commonwealth.

The electoral laws of the Australian colonies varied widely and it was under State electoral laws that the first election was held in for the new Commonwealth of Australia. The first Parliament devoted an extensive debate to its first electoral legislation, which resulted in the Commonwealth Franchise Act and the Commonwealth Electoral Act The Commonwealth Franchise Act established a uniform universal franchise for those who had attained 21 years of age, irrespective of sex or marital status, who were resident in Australia for six months continuously and who were naturalised or natural born subjects of the British monarch.

Those disqualified or excluded from the franchise were those "of unsound mind, attainted of treason, under sentence of imprisonment for one year or more, or were aboriginal natives of Australasia, Asia, Africa or the Pacific Islands except New Zealand ". The Commonwealth Electoral Act provided for single member electorates, a first past the post electoral system, voluntary enrolment and voluntary voting. The machinery for the administration of the electoral system was also created.

This included the function of creating and maintaining electoral rolls for the Commonwealth. Enrolment was then made compulsory by the Commonwealth Electoral Act This was as a result of recommendations by the Chief Electoral Officer and was intended to ensure the accuracy of the electoral rolls. First past the post voting remained in force for the House of Representatives until the introduction of preferential voting by the Commonwealth Electoral Act Preferential voting for Senate elections was introduced by the Commonwealth Electoral Act and this system remained until the adoption of proportional representation by the Commonwealth Electoral Act Between and those eligible to vote were compelled to enrol for federal elections, but voting itself remained voluntary.

The Labor government of Andrew Fisher accepted the argument that all who were eligible to vote should be compulsorily enrolled. Legislation was passed accordingly. Compulsory enrolment, it was argued, would enhance the administrative efficiency of the electoral process and have the added benefit of inspiring citizens to take an active interest in the affairs of the nation and to ensure proper representation.

Furthermore the time consuming task of persuading people to enrol, even if not to vote, would be minimised. From until the introduction of compulsory voting by the Commonwealth Electoral Act , a total of 24 Acts and 12 unsuccessful Bills concerning the electoral system were considered by the Parliament.

Their number and contents are evidence of a continuing preoccupation with the electoral system, its fairness, possible and partisan advantages, the need for freedom from malpractice and the need for accessibility. Apart from establishing the basic principles of the electoral system, Parliament devoted considerable attention to such details as enrolment procedures, postal voting, absentee voting and residential requirements.

The Australian Labor Party was concerned to ensure that itinerant workers, such as shearers, were not prevented from exercising the vote as a result of arduous enrolment provisions. Compulsory voting became part of ALP policy in Compulsory voting was recommended as a natural corollary to compulsory enrolment by a Royal Commission into Commonwealth Electoral Law and Administration in The first attempt to introduce compulsory voting for Commonwealth elections came to nothing.

The Compulsory Voting Act provided for compulsory voting at the referenda for which writs had been issued. However, the referenda were cancelled and the writs withdrawn.

This Act became the basis for the legislation. The Queensland Liberal government led by Premier Denham introduced changes to Queensland electoral law in Compulsory voting was an additional measure adopted. The Labor Party initially opposed compulsory voting but changed its attitude during the debate to support the measure. In the last federal election prior to the introduction of compulsory voting turnout in Australia was This quite naturally increased dramatically with the introduction of compulsory voting.

Senator Payne saw the legislation as providing the best results from the system of compulsory enrolment. He said:. We should, I think, recognize that the natural corollary to compulsory enrolment is compulsory voting. Claiming to be a democratic community we naturally expect the people of Australia to be sufficiently interested in the constitution of the national Parliament to see that it is thoroughly representative of political thought in the electoral divisions.

Unfortunately this claim cannot be substantiated. All our effort to retain interest in electoral matters have failed lamentably during the last few years. At the last Commonwealth elections in we were in the most unenviable position that only Parliament is supposed to be a reflex of the mind of the people. If the people exhibit no interest in the selection of their representatives, it must necessarily follow, in the course of time, that there must be considerable deterioration in the nature of the laws governing the social and economic development of this country.

We claim, with a certain amount of pride, that our national legislature of Australia is based on democracy. The presumption is that our laws are enacted by a majority of the electors represented by a majority of the members in this Parliament.

Senator Gardiner ALP, NSW, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate , while prepared to vote for the bill, believed it to be a further trespass on the liberty of the people even though compulsory voting was part of the platform of the Australian Labor Party. In this case some Labor members were reluctant to support any measures which were comparable with conscription.

The ALP was still suffering the aftermath of the split over conscription and any social or political measures which involved compelling the citizenry were met with suspicion. In the wake of the split, the reflex action of the ALP was to advance arguments about the freedom of the individual from the compulsions of the State.

I am sorry to find that there are so many conscriptionists on the opposite benches who have become seised [sic] of the necessity of almost taking decent citizens by the scruff of the neck and compelling them to vote. I do not believe in conscription! I hate it at any time if there is any possible alternative. I was sorry to hear Senator Findley speak so pronouncedly in favour of the conscription of the citizens! What is the world coming to?

I stand for freedom. Senator Findley ALP, Victoria commented that elections had become very costly, with large numbers expecting to be conveyed to polling booths. Only three members spoke in the debate. Mann's parliamentary career was marked by two notable events: his advocacy of compulsory voting and his later criticism of the Bruce- Page Government in over its failure to prosecute coal mine owner John Brown.

This action led to his exclusion from the party room and with W M Hughes and three others he helped bring down the Government when it attempted to abolish the Conciliation and Arbitration Court. Mann argued that democracy was a form of government in which the ruling power of the state is vested in the members of the community as a whole. This meant that the right to rule belonged to a majority of those qualified to vote. He challenged those who opposed compulsory voting to suggest alternative means to increase turnout:.

The people should be jealous of their democratic privileges: and we have the right to ask of them that they should regard those privileges, not only as something they ought to prize, but as involving a duty which they should perform, and the performance of which the state has a right to demand of them.

As a rule those who are least zealous in exercising the franchise are most ready to criticise the acts of Parliament. People need to be taught that they will be good democrats, not by being arm- chair or street- corner critics, but by becoming in reality responsible for public acts. He noted that compulsory voting had been introduced by the Queensland government in and the turnout increased. He argued that many Queensland voters did not distinguish between State and Commonwealth elections and thus Queensland turnout for Commonwealth elections had been high.

Thus compelling people to vote would arouse an intelligent interest in politics and deepen the political knowledge of the people. Mann addressed the main argument against compulsory voting that it was an interference with the liberty of the subject. Against this he quoted Lord Bryce who wrote in Modern Democracies that:. As individual liberty consists in exemption from legal control, so political liberty consists in participation in legal control. Individual liberty is less likely to be invaded when the legal control is that exercised by a real majority of the people.

The infringement of liberty aside, the other argument, said Mann, was that compulsory voting would increase the power of the press, but he dismissed that as a possible danger.

Mr Duncan-Hughes Liberal, Boothby, SA wondered whether the government may have ulterior motives for introducing compulsory voting concerned with keeping complete records of the citizens and questioned the logic of the procedure:. For various reasons it may suit a government to have a statistical record of persons who are qualified to vote. To compel the electors to register their names, so that there may be a record of the number of electors, is undoubtedly the prerogative of government but to say that the elector shall vote, whether he wishes or not, does not seem to me to follow logically from that procedure.

Duncan-Hughes and others who spoke against the Bill or at best spoke in qualified support were raising matters concerned with the freedom of the individual and by implication the surveillance capacity of government. The electoral roll, in , was considered one potential method of conducting surveillance over citizens. By contemporary standards of government and corporate intelligence the efficiency of electoral rolls as a data base seems quaint.

Section A 1 provided that:. Section A also established Electoral Office procedure for recording compliance, failure to vote and for penalties for failure to vote. Since the introduction of compulsory voting there has been some discussion of the principles and particularities of the situation in Australia, but the major political parties have tacitly supported its retention until recently.

In the Liberal Party Federal Council adopted a policy to introduce voluntary voting for federal parliamentary elections. An attempt was made to abolish compulsory voting in South Australia in when the Liberal government introduced a Bill which passed the House of Assembly but was defeated in the Legislative Council.

The most succinct statements recently made in favour of voluntary voting were delivered in the course of that debate and in the published proceedings of the fiftieth anniversary conference of the founding of the Liberal party. Section of the Commonwealth Electoral Act makes electoral enrolment compulsory for all eligible citizens aged 18 years and over and subsection 1 of that Act states:.

However, what compulsory voting actually entails is attendance by the elector at a polling booth, having the elector's name crossed off the electoral roll, and being given a ballot paper. The elector may fail to put the ballot paper in the ballot box, may fail to mark the ballot paper or may deliberately cast an informal vote. The polling booth staff do nothing to ensure the vote is actually cast. With the secret ballot it is impossible to ensure electors actually mark the ballot paper.

This arrangement is deemed a reasonable compromise between the general duty of voting and the dilemma of those choosing not to vote because of objecting either to the exercise of the vote or the compulsion, or for a specific reason for a particular event.

With this practice there is no actual distinction drawn between the compulsion to attend a polling place and the option to vote; once the voter is at the polling place they may as well vote. There have been occasional attempts to abolish compulsory voting. The Bill lapsed at prorogation. As the Menzies Liberal government was in power the Bill evidently lacked government support.

The most concerted attempt to abolish compulsory voting since its introduction was made in when the South Australian Liberal Government introduced a Bill for abolition. On introducing the Bill the Premier, Dean Brown, said in his Second Reading Speech that compulsory voting had removed the need for parties to persuade people to vote and this resulted in political parties in Australia having small memberships.

Voluntary voting would enhance the political system and add some vigour to the electoral process. Brown noted that South Australia already had voluntary enrolment. It may be noted, however, that this is because South Australia has had a joint electoral roll agreement with the Commonwealth since Accordingly, South Australia's voluntary enrolment system has little effect on the numbers enrolled.

The arguments presented in the South Australian Parliament were of two main themes: the freedom of the individual not to vote and the deleterious effects of compulsion on the system as a whole. Yet in assessing the value of compulsory voting Colin Hughes, Professor of Political Science at the University of Queensland and a former Electoral Commissioner, has argued that the practical advantages or disadvantages of compulsory voting ought to be the criteria by which it should be judged.

According to Hughes a series of questions need to be posed about the effects on the political system. Has compulsory voting inflated the informal vote? Has it increased the total vote? Has it been widely regarded as oppressive? Has it promoted political education? What effect has it had on political participation generally? To those questions could be added the following: What might be the effects of abolition of compulsory voting? Who would benefit or be disadvantaged by its abolition?

In Australia, compulsory voting resulted in an immediate improvement in turnout, which has since remained consistently high. Attachment A shows the levels of turnout and the rates of informal voting for Commonwealth and State elections since Federation. Turnout largely is related to registration procedures and Australia has a very effective system of compulsory enrolment with continuous maintenance of the rolls by a statutory body, the Australian Electoral Commission.

High rates of informal voting are also related to factors other than compulsory voting, including the complexity of the voting system, the stringency of the formality criteria, the number of candidates contesting the election, and the number of electors from non- English speaking backgrounds. Hughes discusses the possible correlation of the informal voting rate with compulsory voting and concludes:. The rate of informal voting is consistently highest for those elections demanding elaborate selections in multi- member constituencies: Tasmania since , New South Wales briefly, and the Senate.

The contribution of compulsory voting to informal voting appears to be slight, and never greater than 1 per cent. When the elections statistics to are considered, it is clear that the reason for the substantial decrease in informal voting was the very high use of group- ticket voting for Senate elections, which was first used at the election.

While the informal vote for the Senate decreased from 9. The Australian Electoral Commission has expanded its informational and educational role considerably since e.

Different methods of marking a preference on the ballot paper can also contribute to the level of informal voting. For example, changes to New South Wales electoral law in resulted in an overall informal vote for the election of 9. The highest informal vote in was The changes introduced in altered the criteria of what constituted a formal vote for the Assembly so that only numbers 1,2, A referendum requires a tick only.

The first election for the Australian Capital Territory - held on 4 March - following the introduction of self- government, provides another illustration of how the voting system can affect the informal voting rate. The electoral system employed was a modified d'Hondt 27 system of proportional representation, using a Droop quota 28 of 5. There were candidates contesting 17 seats. Many of these contested the election as a protest against either the fact or the form of self- government.

Many other candidates stood because it was clear that the electoral system would result in no one party gaining a majority of seats. There was a very large ballot paper over a metre in length and the scrutiny was perplexing as, with the exclusion of those candidates whose primary vote was below the quota, voters could not then be sure to whom their intended preferences would actually go.

The result was not declared until 8 May , two months after the election. The informal vote rate was 5. This compared with A refusal to vote is the more likely explanation because of opposition to self- government rather than an opposition to compulsory voting. People may oppose compulsory voting in a particular case, but not necessarily as a general principle. At the election, also conducted under the modified D'Hondt system, the informality rate was higher than in at 6.

Compliance with compulsory voting is high on two measures: first, when taken as a percentage of those entitled to vote and second, in terms of the actual numbers of people investigated by the Australian Electoral Commission for failure to vote.

The Commonwealth Electoral Act provides that every person who is entitled to be enrolled as an elector is obliged to apply for enrolment within 21 days of becoming so entitled. Section of the Commonwealth Electoral Act specifies a number of offences in relation to the failure to vote.

On receipt of a penalty notice issued under section an elector who failed to vote may seek to have the penalty waived by providing the relevant Australian Electoral Commission District Returning Officer "a valid and sufficient reason for the failure [to vote]" [subsection 5 ].

It is a moot point, however, as to whether the available evidence shows strong resistance to compulsory voting. Compliance with compulsory voting, when investigated attitudinally, does not seem to draw strong resistance. In its 93 Annual Report, the Australian Electoral Commission summarised the results of a national opinion survey conducted for the Commission in June Compliance with compulsory voting is not apparently regarded as onerous and compulsory voting has been consistently supported by a majority of people surveyed.

On the other hand, it appears from information collected by a leading opponent of compulsory voting, South Australian Liberal Senator Nick Minchin, that a not insignificant number of electors are strongly opposed to it. Incomplete data supplied by the Australian Electoral Commission shows that at least 40 persons have been gaoled for refusing to pay fines arising out of a failure to vote at the Federal Election and that further prosecutions are contemplated.

While compulsion can be maintained through the threat of prosecution, citizens are also encouraged to vote through the publicity and education role undertaken by the Australian Electoral Commission. Section 7 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act vests the AEC with responsibility for promoting awareness of electoral and parliamentary matters by education and information campaigns and to promote and conduct research on these matters. The AEC has thus produced a body of information about elections and the electoral system readily available to citizens and has designed and implemented educational programs about elections and electoral systems.

However, knowledge of the political system, effective education and participation in the system are not singularly affected by compulsory voting. A sound understanding by the citizenry of the political process, the institutions of government and the methods of representation is elemental to democratic legitimacy. Thus the arguments about compulsory voting turn on the question of whether knowledge of the system and the legitimacy of the state are enhanced or diminished by the discipline to vote.

The profound symbolism and significance of voting is crucial to the consideration of compulsion. The government of democratic societies is made legitimate through the act of voting. Paul Kleppner wrote:. Voting is an important contributor to the development or maintenance of citizens' allegiance to the political system, to the existing set of constitutional arrangements.

The act of casting ballots is an affirmation, a profession of faith in the meaningful character of the electoral process. At the same time, engaging in the act inculcates or strengthens citizens' feelings of subjective competence, the sense of their own potential significance in the governing process.

That reinforces their predisposition to accept voluntarily the results of the particular election. More importantly, it reinforces emotional commitment to the process as such and to the legal- institutional arrangements in which it is embedded. In other words, voting is an important source of diffuse support for the political system.

Kleppner also notes that voting is the participatory act most accessible to the largest number of citizens and the political act in which more citizens engage than in any other. Voting remains the mechanism that most believe to be the only one available to them for influencing what the government does. Though Hughes cites approvingly Robson's views that it is a mistake to argue this issue on the level of abstraction, it is important to consider the philosophical justifications of the issue.

These points are grouped under three subheadings; voting and individual liberty, voting and the role of pressure groups and the issues of elections. The main principle at issue is whether the use of compulsion is justifiable in a democracy.

The argument against compulsion on this basis is addressed in Part 4. The basic argument in favour of compulsion is that voting is a positive obligation owed by the citizen to the polity, because the vote is not only a specific electoral choice, but has a profound political and social significance.

That argument was put by those speaking in the parliamentary debate in It continues to be a major argument in support of compulsory voting. While opponents of compulsion believe that individual liberty is contravened in compelling the exercise of the vote, proponents see the necessity for balancing rights and duties.

Chris Sumner, former Attorney General, argued in the recent debate in the South Australian Parliament that: 'Rights and duties in our society co- exist':. Advocates of compulsory voting argue that decisions made by democratically elected governments are more legitimate when higher proportions of the population participate.

They argue further that voting, voluntarily or otherwise, has an educational effect upon the citizens. Political parties can derive financial benefits from compulsory voting, since they do not have to spend resources convincing the electorate that it should in general turn out to vote.

Lastly, if democracy is government by the people, presumably this includes all people, then it is every citizen's responsibility to elect their representatives. The leading argument against compulsory voting is that it is not consistent with the freedom associated with democracy. Voting is not an intrinsic obligation and the enforcement of the law would be an infringement of the citizens' freedom associated with democratic elections.

It may discourage the political education of the electorate because people forced to participate will react against the perceived source of oppression. Is a government really more legitimate if the high voter turnout is against the will of the voters?

Many countries with limited financial capacity may not be able to justify the expenditures of maintaining and enforcing compulsory voting laws. It has been proved that forcing the population to vote results in an increased number of invalid and blank votes compared to countries that have no compulsory voting laws.

Another consequence of mandatory voting is the possible high number of "random votes". Voters who are voting against their free will may check off a candidate at random, particularly the top candidate on the ballot. The voter does not care whom they vote for as long as the government is satisfied that they fulfilled their civic duty.

What effect does this immeasurable category of random votes have on the legitimacy of the democratically elected government? A figure depicting the exact number of countries that practice compulsory voting is quite arbitrary.

The simple presence or absence of mandatory voting laws in a constitution is far too simplistic. It is more constructive to analyse compulsory voting as a spectrum ranging from a symbolic, but basically impotent, law to a government which systematic follow-up of each non-voting citizen and implement sanctions against them.

This spectrum implies that some countries formally have compulsory voting laws but do not, and have no intention to, enforce them. There are a variety of possible reasons for this. Not all laws are created to be enforced. Some laws are created to merely state the government's position regarding what the citizen's responsibility should be.

Mandatory voting laws that do not include sanctions may fall into this category. Although a government may not enforce mandatory voting laws or even have formal sanctions in law for failing to vote, the law may have some effect upon the citizens.

For example, in Austria voting is compulsory in only two regions, with sanctions being weakly enforced. However, these regions tend to have a higher turnout average than the national average. Other possible reasons for not enforcing the laws could be complexity and resources required for enforcement. Countries with limited budgets may not place the enforcement of mandatory voting laws as a high priority still they hope that the presence of the law will encourage the citizens to participate.

Can a country be considered to practice compulsory voting if the mandatory voting laws are ignored and irrelevant to the voting habits of the electorate? Is a country practicing compulsory voting if there are no penalties for not voting? What if there are penalties for failing to vote but they are never or are scarcely enforced?

Or if the penalty is negligible? For some time, however, our three dominant parties, Labor, Liberal and the Country Party turned National, have been doing this for fewer and fewer people, with each suffering declines in brand loyalty. Fewer people report very strong levels of partisanship, more are splitting their vote between the House of Representatives and the Senate, and fewer are following the parties' how-to-vote cards. Accompanying this loosening of party loyalties has been a general decline in trust for our major institutions in politics, business and the media.

Without compulsory voting, many disillusioned voters would turn away from politics altogether and stop voting; but because they have to find someone to vote for, new contestants, many from outside the established political class, enter the fray to pick up their protest and offer an alternative. There are many reasons to be frustrated with Australian politics in the second decade of the 21st century, as we suffer our sixth prime minister in eight years, but our electoral system is not one of them.

What the story of compulsory voting tells us is how very good we are at elections. Judith Brett is an emeritus professor of politics at La Trobe University. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.

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