Compulsory voting

There is a natural tendency to think of compulsory voting as a straightforward contradiction of one of the  fundamental principles of democracy. 

But I have been reading several things which throw light on this apparent contradiction. One is Judith Brett's excellent if rather clumsily titled book on Australian democracy - From secret ballot to democracy sausage: how Australia got compulsory voting (Text Publishing, 2019)

There has also been an interesting report on American democracy by the Knight Foundation - The Untold story of American non-voters (The 100 Million Project) (Knight Foundation, 2020) downloadable from https://the100million.org/ 

At the 2016 US presidential election, 27.3% voted for Trump, 28.5% voted for Clinton, and 41.3% did not vote. Non-voters have a relatively lower confidence that elections represent the will of the people. Those lacking confidence do so on the principal grounds that the president is not elected by popular vote, that the system is rigged, or that the process is over-influenced by big money. But the low vote itself undermines democracy.

And also worth listening to is a podcast by Chris Budd (Professor of Mathematics at the University of Bath) Truly fair elections are impossible - mathematically. (Radio National, 27 February, 2020).  Download the podcast from https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/truly-fair-elections-are-impossible---mathematically/11949644 Australia's electoral system comes well out of Budd's analysis.

As Brett argues, one of the preoccupations of Australians has been the importance of broad participation in the process. In Australia, participation in the electoral process is seen as a civic duty, and there are many measures to make voting as easy as possible. And in spite of the common aphorism, "vote early and vote often" there is no evidence that there is a significant level of fraudulent voting.

Brett concludes, Australia does voting well, and this is the result of a long period of evolution, a broad sense of fair play, and an electoral administration which is perceived to be impartial and honest. It does not of course mean that Australia does government well. 

I think that these are the six elements of Australian voting which make it work well:

• the secret ballot - we are said to have invented that, and it is sometimes called the Australian ballot
• the fact that everyone votes, and must vote - we don't have categories of people excluded from the franchise (e.g. people who have committed crimes); and in fact voting is not compulsory, since you are not obliged to vote, only to take a ballot paper.
• there is an impartial and fair electoral administration, not controlled by the political process, so our electorates are close to equal size and boundaries are drawn fairly; the same systems apply in all states and nationally.
• Australians can vote by postal ballot, by absentee vote (at any polling booth in Australia), and at many locations overseas. The electoral rolls are kept up to date. Voting is easier than anywhere else in the world, and has been for over a century.
• preferential voting, together with an element of proportional representation means that the system is more representative of different political currents than the systems of the UK, US and other first past the post systems; it means that there is a much higher element of choice in voting than there is in simple majoritarian two-party systems
• there is a relative absence of animosity, as exemplified by the custom of the democracy sausage.

It may be that introduction of some or all of these features into the electoral systems of other countries would enhance their effectiveness. What it is reasonable for your country to ask of you? 

Voting seems the most reasonable and least onerous of all the things governments demand of us.