But these partisan origins make PV’s endurance puzzling. If it benefited the
anti-Labor coalition at the expense of Labor, at least until the emergence of the
Greens, why has Labor tolerated the system? Perhaps its endurance rests on it
not, in fact, seriously offending or favouring any political interest. Political
scientists have repeatedly shown that only a small percentage of election
results are changed by preferences (Reilly 2004, p. 86). And alterations in the
actual winner of government on account of preferences are surprisingly few,
and highly anomalous in their direction. (In the 1961 election, Communist
Party preferences saved the anti-Labor government.) But there is some empir-
ical evidence that, without changing the party that wins the majority of seats,
PV increases the number of seats won by the party that loses (Johnston and
Forrest 2009). To put it another way, PV may have the effect of reducing the
number of marginal seats.^15 In this possibility we may have a clue to its
endurance: here is a scheme that appeals to all established political parties;
here is a scheme that leaves unchanged the award of the great prize, victory,
while introducing a consolation prize to the loser.
8.4 Compulsory Voting
This is the most conspicuous of Australia’s quirks.^16 Yet Australia is neither the
first nor the only country to compel voting. Sorting through the rags of
psephological history reveals that Georgia experimented with it as long ago
as 1776. And contemporary advocates of compulsory voting can compile a list
of about two dozen countries that currently ordain it. But of all the numerous
excursions into compulsory voting, it is in Australia that the method persisted.
And it has done so with broad support; polls for several decades have indicated
about 70 per cent of the public at large favours compulsory voting. Labor
strongly supports it; and, despite all formal evidence that compulsion is to
Labor’s advantage (Jackman 1999; Chong et al. 2006), the anti-Labor govern-
ment of 2004–7 that controlled both Houses made no move to abolish it,
notwithstanding goading from some its senior members.
Compulsory voting began as an attempt to use law to defeat geography. Its
pioneering introduction in Queensland in 1914 is usually interpreted as a
defensive manoeuvre by the anti-Labor government in the face of a
prospective Labor victory in an approaching state election. But its advocates
were specifically rural: a pastoralist and three members of the Farmers’
(^15) PV would, for example, reduce the number of marginal seats if the typically distributed party
(the Greens?) are stronger in seats where the party that their preferences favour (Labor) is also
stronger. 16
Voting is compulsory at state and federal levels. NSW, Victoria, and Queensland also require
voting in local government elections.
William O. Coleman