8
Australia’s Electoral Idiosyncrasies
William O. Coleman
In many countries it is contrary to law for prisoners to vote. In Australia it is,
for a wide range of offenders, compulsory. This is one unlooked-for upshot of a
distinct electoral Australian idiosyncrasy; unlike any other developed country,
it is obligatory to vote.^1 But this idiosyncrasy is merely the most conspicuous
of several singularities respecting Australia’s electoral politics. Others include
the universal use of‘preferential voting’(PV) in single-member seats,^2 the
early introduction and enduring use of a variant of proportional representa-
tion (PR), an Electoral Commission of a power quite unmatched elsewhere,
and the persistence of a distinct and national-level Country Party of consid-
erable political significance.
These peculiar institutions are a settled and unquestioned part of the Aus-
tralian political framework. Most, indeed, provide the occasion for national
self-congratulation. They seem to constitute proof of the nation’s attachment
to democracy, a commitment epitomized, it is proudly held, by Australia’s
adoption of the secret ballot before any other polity.^3
This chapter surveys the origins of these particularities, and weighs what
they actually signal about the nature of Australian society. It argues that
they are not evidence of some special congruity of the Australian outlook to
(^1) ‘Compulsory voting’means here that all those eligible to enrol are required by law to enrol,
and all enrolees are required by law to vote. In measuring the extent of compulsory voting it needs
to be recognized that laws to compel voting are no longer enforced in Belgium or Greece. With the
abandonment of compulsory voting by Chile in 2012, no Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) country apart from Australia can currently be said to have compulsory
voting. 2
‘Preferential voting’is the Australian usage for what is elsewhere variously known as the
‘alternative vote 3 ’, the‘instant run-off’, and‘ranked voting’.
Thus, it is claimed‘Australia and New Zealand share the honour of being the oldest continuous
democracies’(Hughes and Costar 2006, p. 8).