During his second term, President Barack Obama spoke publicly for the first time about why he believed the United States should adopt mandatory voting.
“It would be transformative,” he said in a 2015 speech at the City Club of Cleveland. “If everyone voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country.”
He mentioned Australia, one of about two dozen nations with compulsory voting.
It’s had a requirement to vote since 1924.
Voter registration — called enrollment in Australia — has been mandatory even longer, since 1911. If you don’t vote in a federal election there, you face a fine of 20 Australian dollars, the equivalent of about $13.50 in the United States, and roughly nine of 10 eligible voters cast a ballot each election.
Higher voter turnout leads to Australians being more thoroughly represented in Parliament. That’s because it ensures that the electorate — the people who vote — more closely matches the demographics of the population as a whole.
“Ultimately, it’s good for democracy,” said Samantha Ratnam, a legislator in the state of Victoria for the left-wing Greens party. “It means you’re talking to more people, and more people feel then a part of the process.”
Indigenous people turn out at significantly lower rates than other voters. And researchers say there has been some softening in turnout among young people in recent election cycles. But the vast majority of eligible voters cast a ballot, which affects how politicians and parties position themselves and how Parliament operates.
Turnout skyrockets
When Australia changed its system in 1924, the effect was immediate: Fewer than 60% of registered voters cast a ballot in the 1922 election. Participation shot up to more than 90% in November 1925, the first federal election after the switch.
A century later, voter turnout has never dipped below 89% and has at times eclipsed 95%, a point of pride in a country where seven of 10 people support the voting requirement.
Nations with enforced compulsory voting like Australia have much higher voter turnout than countries with voluntary voting like the United States.
It’s about 15 to 17 percentage points higher on average, according to Shane Singh, an international affairs professor at the University of Georgia who wrote the book “Beyond Turnout: How Compulsory Voting Shapes Citizens and Political Parties.”
“If you force someone — legally — to do something, they tend to do it,” Singh said.
Compared to Australia, the United States is a laggard on voter turnout. In the past century, it has broken the 65% threshold just once, during the 2020 presidential election, according to the U.S. Elections Project. Turnout for midterm elections — those not involving a presidential race — is even lower. Since 1924, only the 2018 midterm election had voter turnout above 50%.
Political center thrives
Like the United States, Australia has two major parties: the center-left Labor Party and the center-right Liberal Party.
In the U.S. system, candidates work to fire up their base, often by highlighting social issues that divide many Democrats and Republicans, such as LGBTQ+ rights or abortion.
In the Australian model, politicians steer clear of topics that could alienate voters in the middle or on the other side.
“If everybody or almost everybody is voting, then the parties have to make more encompassing, broader pitches,” Singh said. “Where everybody has to vote, parties don’t benefit by moving to the extremes to try to incentivize turnout among abstainers who might have extreme positions.”
The need for Australian politicians to appeal to the middle is perhaps evidenced by the extent to which politicians work together across the aisle.
“I can honestly say that, here in Australia, we’re still able to do it,” said Peter Khalil, a Labor member of Parliament from Melbourne.
“There is a mutual respect,” said David Southwick, a Liberal legislator in the state of Victoria. “I might not agree with a lot of your policies. But I do understand that we’re all here to make a difference and to get a job done.”
Is the American way more democratic?
Perhaps the biggest critique of mandatory voting in Australia hinges on individual rights and whether the American way is more democratic.
“The right to vote of itself must entail the right not to vote, and that is denied to Australian citizens,” said Nick Minchin, a former Liberal leader in the Senate and former finance minister.
Minchin has long been one of Australia’s highest-profile opponents of compulsory voting. As a senator in the late 1990s, he unsuccessfully pushed to replace it with voluntary voting.
“I have fought a lonely and quixotic battle to restore to Australians the legal right to choose whether or not to exercise their right to vote,” he said in his final speech to the Senate in 2011.
Neither the public nor his own party was willing to embrace voluntary voting.
Minchin pointed out that the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and most countries in continental Europe do not have compulsory voting.
“We are the ones that are the exception to the rule,” he said of Australia.
According to Singh, only one in seven voters in democracies worldwide are required to vote.
Minchin said the compulsory system has a negative impact on parties because they have less incentive to get out the vote.
“The political parties here suffer declining membership, lack of purpose, lack of reason to belong to a political party,” he said. “I think that’s bad for democracy.”
Not a new idea in the U.S.
When Obama cited Australia’s compulsory voting system in 2015, it was likely the first time many Americans had heard of the idea. But the United States — and what would become the U.S. — has been having a conversation about the practice for centuries. Several British colonies in America, including Maryland, Virginia and Georgia, as well as the Plymouth colony had versions of compulsory voting. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, 12 states tinkered with the idea, some during state constitutional conventions, according to Singh.
While no states made voting mandatory, Massachusetts and North Dakota amended their constitutions to allow for a shift to compulsory voting.
Around that time, in 1889, Kansas City imposed extra taxes on citizens who abstained from voting. It was the only U.S. jurisdiction to have instituted mandatory voting. But it didn’t last. The Missouri Supreme Court struck down the law in 1896.
Obama was not the first president to float the idea.
“This would be a better country and a purer democracy if 95% of our people voted,” former President Lyndon B. Johnson said in December 1972 during a speech to the Civil Rights Symposium, his last public appearance.
LBJ and Obama suggested that requiring voting could help increase voting among Black Americans. The group has faced more disenfranchisement than any other demographic in American history, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
In recent years, there’s been revived interest in the topic at the state level. Since 2022, lawmakers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Washington have introduced compulsory voting bills, according to research by the Harvard Law Review.
In the U.S., impact might vary
Why has mandatory voting never taken hold in the United States?
Americans are far from sold on the idea. Only one in five Americans thinks voting should be required, according to a 2018 survey by the Pew Research Center.
According to Singh, imposing compulsory voting on a population that’s primed to be unreceptive can backfire, as has been seen in several Latin American countries.
He said that, given the American focus on individualism, that would be a strong possibility in the United States.
“The United States is probably one of the least likely cases for the public to enthusiastically embrace compulsory voting,” he said.
Even if Americans are not ready for compulsory voting, there are many ways to increase turnout. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, 28 states made it easier to get a mail-in ballot, one of the major drivers of the record turnout in 2020.
“The election demonstrated that, if voters are given more time and more options, they will take advantage of their opportunities,” E.J. Dionne Jr. and Miles Rapoport wrote in their 2022 book “100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting.”
States that sent mail ballots to all voters and those with same-day registration also saw higher voter turnout, according to a report from NonProfit VOTE and the U.S. Elections Project.
Experts say anything that helps boost registration leads to higher turnout. That includes automatic voter registration (currently done in 24 states), pre-registration for 16- to-17-year-olds (currently in 21 states) and online voter registration (42 states).
Any measure that decreases the “cost” of voting, according to Singh, leads to higher turnout — for example, reducing the distance between a person’s home and a polling place. The United States could take a page from Australia, where voters can cast a ballot at any polling place in their state.
Singh said that making elections concurrent would help bring out more voters because people chafe at having to go to the polls repeatedly in a short period.
That argument has a special resonance in Chicago. The city recently held four elections in nine months: a midterm primary in June 2022, the midterm election in November 2022, a municipal election in February 2023 and a municipal runoff in April 2023. Citywide turnout for this year’s presidential primary, in March, was an abysmal 26%.
Australia’s other electoral innovations
Australia has a rich history of improving its electoral system. In addition to compulsory voting, voters rank candidates from multiple parties, its Senate uses proportional representation, and an independent commission administers federal elections.
“All of these innovations play a kind of subconscious role in making people feel like their vote is worth it and that they have something to contribute,” said Bill Browne, director of the Australia Institute’s Democracy and Accountability program.
In 1918, Australia adopted preferential voting. There are no primaries, and voters rank all of the candidates running for a position. If someone does not win a majority, voters’ additional preferences are taken into consideration. This is often called ranked-choice voting in the United States.
Australia’s preferential system gives independents and politicians from minor parties a chance at a seat by giving voters more choice. When more parties win seats, politicians have more incentive to work across party lines.
“We have to work across the spectrum,” said Ratnam, the Greens party legislator in Victoria. “It forces you to think about adapting your ideas, and that’s a really good thing to be open to change, compromise, be flexible. That leads to better outcomes for the community.”
In 1948, Australia’s Senate adopted proportional representation. In a process called the single-transferable vote, voters rank candidates as they do for lower-house races. After preferences are distributed, any candidate who reaches a threshold of votes known as the quota gets a seat.
Under this system, a group of lawmakers — rather than an individual — is elected to represent a district, and the final makeup includes a range of viewpoints, including minority voices.
Mistrust in the way elections are run in the United States is another barrier to expanding participation. More than 3,000 governments — states, cities and counties — are involved in administering any given federal election in the U.S. In Australia, the job is done by a single entity.
The Australian Electoral Commission is an independent body that manages everything from printing ballots to setting up polling stations to tallying votes.
While many U.S. election officials are elected officials from the Democratic or Republican parties, the AEC is nonpartisan. Aussies know it by name. It gets high marks from the public, and its organized, no-nonsense practices help build legitimacy around elections.
Notably in Australia, due to the way the AEC operates, two problems that plague American politics — voter suppression and gerrymandering — effectively do not exist.
“There is no voter suppression in Australia,” said AEC commissioner Tom Rogers. “We really go the extra mile to make sure that’s the case.”
Gerrymandering, the engineering of district boundaries to favor the party in power, is not allowed to happen due to the way redistricting is handled.
Redistricting is known as redistribution in Australia, and it happens as needed, based on changes in population. Politicians, political parties and the public are free to submit recommendations, but an independent, nonpartisan committee that includes the AEC makes the decisions and draws the maps.
The country also makes it easier to vote by holding elections on a Saturday, not a Tuesday. And there’s a party-like atmosphere with cake stalls and the ubiquitous delicacy known as “democracy sausage.”
Served at Election Day barbecues around the country, the dish is a simple affair: a crisp-skinned “snag” on a slice of white bread, topped with ketchup and onions.
Citizen chefs set up grills at polling stations, often at primary schools, and sell the sausages to raise money for playground improvements, new volleyball equipment and other good causes.
The “sausages sizzles” lend a meaty aroma to the civic duty of voting.
This being Australia, where most people live near the coast, voters have been known to show up in bikinis, board shorts and Speedos, and the celebration often rolls into the night.