Australia’s a democratic wonderland. A vote of thanks to one rather strange man

Australians make too little of the success of our democracy. So it is unsurprising that last month, the centenary of an event which profoundly shaped it passed uncelebrated and unnoticed. On July 31, 1924, the amendments to the Commonwealth Electoral Act which enshrined compulsory voting at federal elections came into effect.

The vaguely festive character of Australian election days is unique in the world.Credit: Bloomberg

Any well-informed American, British or other foreign political observer or journalist will usually speak of admiration for an electoral system which gives every citizen a sense that they have a stake in the democratic process; one which removes any possibility that the result’s legitimacy might be called into question by claims that, because of variabilities in turnout, it did not represent the true will of the people.

Compulsory voting has had a hugely stabilising effect on Australian democracy. Objections to compulsion are overcome by the fact – as every election pedant will tell you – that the obligation is not to vote, merely to take a ballot paper. It’s such an infrequent and low-level civic obligation that only the sternest of hard-core libertarians would object.

Meanwhile, as is our glorious national custom of taking the pomposity out of serious occasions, election day in Australia is something like a national fete as we troop to schools and community halls to be greeted not just by party workers, but volunteers on cake-stalls, selling raffle tickets and barbecuing the ubiquitous “democracy sausage”. The vaguely festive character of Australian election days is unique.

We insufficiently appreciate how innovative Australia has been in its electoral laws and systems. We were the first to introduce the secret ballot – which became known internationally as “the Australian ballot” – as long ago as 1856, in colonial Victoria. In 1894, South Australia became second only to New Zealand in enacting female suffrage.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his nom de plume, Lewis Carroll, developed the concept of preferential voting.Credit:

By the early decades of the past century, Australia had become a laboratory of democratic experimentation as different jurisdictions not only extended the franchise, but introduced new variants to the standard voluntary first-past-the-post system used in Britain, the United States and elsewhere.

Apart from compulsory voting, our most important reform was the introduction, in 1918, of the preferential method of voting, following the recommendations of a royal commission on elections, which reported in 1915. This innovation has a very strange backstory.

The preferential system of voting resulted from the work of a 19th century mathematician, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who spent his life as a don at Oxford’s grandest college, Christ Church. Dodgson, who never married, was happiest in the company of young girls, whom he often sketched and photographed. He developed a particular fondness for the daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, Dr Henry Liddell.

One day in the summer of 1862, he took Alice Liddell (13 at the time), together with two of her schoolfriends, on a picnic, during which he enchanted them with a story about a little girl who fell down a rabbit hole and had a series of fabulous adventures. He turned the story into a manuscript, which he dedicated to Alice as “the love-gift of a fairytale”. It was published in 1865 under Dodgson’s nom de plume, Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland became probably the most beloved – and certainly the most successful – children’s book in the world.

When he wasn’t dreaming up charming stories to entertain little girls, Charles Dodgson was a seriously good mathematician. One of his fields of interest was what we today call choice theory. In June 1874, he published a paper in which he proposed what he claimed to be the most exact method for expressing an ultimate preference among a multiplicity of alternative choices. It became known among mathematicians as “the Dodgson method”.

Something of an academic entrepreneur, Dodgson did not confine himself to scholarly journals. He published his theory in a pamphlet, which he circulated widely, and also published a version of it in the St James’s Gazette in May 1877. It became known in political circles as well as mathematical ones.

In his biography, Lewis Carroll, Morton Cohen claims that Dodgson’s interest in voting methods had been piqued in the rarefied air of Oxford academic politics. He even suggests that it was originally devised to alter the voting procedures at Christ Church as part of an academic intrigue to displace Liddell, which “grew out of his smouldering animosity towards the dean”. Liddell had long detested Dodgson because of his disapproval of Dodgson’s obsession with his daughter.

Although he failed to usurp Alice’s father, Dodgson’s interest in voting systems grew. He later developed other voting methods specifically for parliamentary elections, one of which he called “proportionate representation”.

When the royal commission on elections reported in 1915, it recommended the adoption of the Dodgson method. (We don’t know whether the royal commissioners were aware that the mathematician who invented it was Lewis Carroll.)

When you cast your vote at the federal election next year, as you munch on your democracy sausage and reflect on the relaxed, good-natured mood of election day in Australia, have a quiet chuckle that the rather strange man who gave us the method of choosing between Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton is the same person who also gave us the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is a professor at ANU.

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