Public ideas
On voting systems
Does compulsory voting protect us from election of extremists? Maybe not. But preferential voting generally plays a stronger protective role.
One Nation’s success in the South Australian election, and its strong showing in opinion polls, have shaken Australians’ belief that our electoral systems and traditions protect us from electing far-right extremist parties. The belief is that preferential voting, an independent electoral commission, and compulsory voting combine to protect us from electing a Trump or an Orbán.
In relation to compulsory voting the theory is that in jurisdictions with voluntary voting those who come out to vote are the more politically partisan, while those from the political centre, who are comparatively indifferent to the election outcome, or who are cynically alienated from democratic processes, stay at home. This leads to political polarization and a hollowed-out middle.
Writing in Inside Story Murray Goot of Macquarie University questions the extent to which compulsory voting protects us from electing hard-right governments: Is compulsory voting a bulwark against extremists?. He points out that the theory described above has not been subject to rigorous empirical scrutiny.
Goot draws on a published opinion poll that asks people if they would have voted if it were not compulsory, and that asks those who would still have voted how they would have voted. In short, he found that voluntary voting wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the 2025 election significantly.
Unsurprisingly he found that those who voted for One Nation tend to be alienated from the political process. They were more likely than others to agree with the statement “that the political system is “fundamentally broken”, but that didn’t mean they would refrain from voting in a voluntary voting system.
His article also has some comments on preferential voting. He acknowledges its role in protecting against polarization, but he also reminds us of situations where such protection is not achieved.
In this regard the roundup after the South Australian election showed that the outcome would have been much the same if there had been first-past-the-post voting.
Preferential voting protects against extremism when there are strong centrist parties in the contest, but not when there are two parties competing on the hard right, as was the case in South Australia and in the Queensland situation to which Goot refers.
When state or federal elections deliver results that upset the established old parties, there are often voices calling for reversion to first-past-the-post voting, as was our system in the early years of our Federation. You can hear William Bowe on Perth’s 6PR presenting a straightforward defence of preferential voting in response to a call-in by former Liberal Premier Colin Barnett, who is still peeved that the voters of Curtin elected independent Kate Chaney.
And just this week we have seen an extraordinary turnout, almost 80 percent, in Hungary. The fascist Fidesz government had clearly rigged the electoral system in its favour, but that didn’t deter people from turning up to throw it out of office.