These events have occurred as part of a worldwide trend that political scientists call “democratic backsliding”. Using checklists to score democracies on how free and fair their elections are, how robust their checks and balances, scholars have observed that previously stable democracies are backsliding into hybrid systems. These are known as anocracies – systems that are partially democratic and partially autocratic.
This trend is alarming because hybrid systems are vulnerable to conflict, more so than pure democracies or pure autocracies.
In contrast, Freedom House, which keeps scores on the health of democracies all over the world, gives Australia a score of 39 out of 40 for political rights, acknowledging we have free and fair elections, with realistic opportunities for opposition parties to win, as well as an independent judiciary and media. We remain democratically strong.
Historian Judith Brett has argued in her book From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage that there are particular features of Australia’s democracy that make it unique. While there have been many factors that have contributed to the stability of our system, three innovations stand out as having been indispensable. The first is the secret ballot of 1856, the second compulsory voting in 1924, and the third establishment of the highly trusted Australian Electoral Commission in 1984.
The innovative “Australian ballot” was legislated by Victorian attorney-general Henry Samuel Chapman. A follower of British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who had argued for the secret ballot since the 1830s, Chapman based his ballot on Bentham’s radical idea but with the additional detail of mandating that the government provide all of the materials to voters at polling stations. Before this, political candidates would hand voting materials to voters, leaving them open to vote-buying, retaliation and blackmail. The Australian ballot was so successful in reducing the external pressures on voters that it was quickly implemented the world over.
Our second innovation has not been copied by other nations, although perhaps it should be. Australia is one of only 21 electoral democracies to have compulsory voting, and one of only nine that enforces the rule.
Whenever I’ve brought up compulsory voting with American friends they unfailingly express horror at the concept, assuming it must lower the quality of electoral outcomes, while also being a violation of “natural rights”. But the truth is it does the opposite. When the indifferent voter is compelled to vote, the votes of fanatics are diluted. To be elected, politicians must appeal to the swing voter, those who vote according to everyday issues as opposed to their pet ideology.
The ability of compulsory voting to dilute the power of fanatics is by design. In her book, Brett writes that this was what motivated John Mackey – one of the earliest advocates of compulsory voting – to support the idea: “What most exercised (Mackey) was the scope voluntary voting gave for small, well-organised minorities to demand that candidates pledge themselves absolutely in return for their support on polling day. This was an obvious allusion to Labor members of parliament, who were required to make a pledge to support Labor’s platform … but Labor was not Mackey’s main concern. It was rather the pressures applied to non-Labor candidates by well-organised total-abstinence and anti-gambling groups, often with religious backing. Mackey believed it was voters chiefly concerned with the general public interest who stayed at home on voting day, leaving the polls to the zealots.”
One look at the state of US democracy today confirms Mackey’s wisdom. According to Gallop polling, fewer than 20 per cent of Americans think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, yet Republicans are forced to pander to this single-issue voting bloc because they are most likely to vote. The Democrats find themselves in a similar situation, having to accommodate extremists in their own ranks who deny the existence of biological sex or who advocate for absurd ideas such as defunding the police.
Compulsory voting reduces the ability of zealots to wield power in our system and reduces the need for politicians to spend huge amounts of money to get people out to vote. While some pundits have complained we have not had enough discussion of policy in this election cycle, we should be grateful we are not subjected to the endless campaigning other nations experience.
Yet the most important outcome of compulsory voting may be that it bakes in popular policies, precluding the need for populist revolts. No prime minister could be elected in this country if they wished to roll back the minimum wage, Medicare or border control. While well-funded interest groups might want to do away with protections for workers, they are unable to because such policies are locked in by virtue of their mass appeal.
This creates an egalitarian as well as conservative society: egalitarian in the sense that those who are less economically well-off are looked after, and conservative in the sense that change happens incrementally instead of all at once.
To top it off, election results in Australia are rarely distrusted or disputed. This is in large part due to the AEC, which makes Australia’s democracy uniquely strong. Established in 1984, the nonpartisan commission takes the logistical details of the election out of the government’s hands, ensuring the process runs smoothly and without political interference, gerrymandering or voter suppression. Trust in the AEC means there is trust in the outcomes of our elections. Whatever the result of the federal election on Saturday, it is highly unlikely the public will not accept the result.
Australia does not have the democratic mythology and symbolism of other countries. Our democracy wasn’t born out of the kind of uprising associated with the Magna Carta, the Declaration of the Rights of Man or the Declaration of Independence. What we have is perhaps better: an extraordinarily well-designed system of governance created by humble civil servants who had an eye for detail. And it is this attention to detail that has created our unique form of democracy, one that is pragmatic and efficient. On Saturday, after we have walked to our local voting booths and had our names checked off for our secret ballot, we should celebrate it.
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In recent years the Hungarian government has taken control of Hungarian media. In Poland, the government has passed laws making the judiciary accountable to politicians. In the US, trust in the electoral system and democracy is at its lowest, with 40 per cent of the population believing the 2020 election was stolen.