Even before the Prime Minister formally scotched the idea, it was clear that Liberal Party advocates for voluntary voting should not have been holding their breath. The implacable opposition of the non-government parties would have required united Coalition support to get it through the Senate, but the Nationals (not to mention many Liberals) are no more keen on the idea than Labor. No doubt the National Party knows its own business, but I am puzzled by their apparent conviction that voluntary voting would damage them. It is true that much of their support comes from rural and small-town areas where incomes are no higher than in urban Labor seats, but it’s also true that voluntary council elections attract far higher turnouts on the National Party’s turf than in the cities. Why would federal elections be any different?
The Australian Election Study has been asking respondents if they would have voted if not compelled to since the survey after 1996 election, providing a one-to-five ranking from "definitely would have voted" (chosen by about 70 per cent of respondents) to "definitely not". Combining results from the four surveys from 1996 to 2004 allows us to cross-tabulate these responses with voting intention for nearly 7000 respondents, including 2976 who voted for the Liberal Party, 2607 for Labor, 333 for the Nationals, 332 for the Democrats and 305 for the Greens. The following table combines responses of "probably would have voted" and "might, might not" into a "maybe" category, and "probably not" and "definitely not" (the latter accounting for only 2.6 per cent in 2004) into "unlikely". The Democrats and Greens vote has also been combined because patterns for the two were very similar.
This makes it clear enough why Labor is united in opposition to voluntary voting, and bolsters Liberals who support it on the basis of realpolitik. But it doesn’t explain why the Nationals are less keen, since their own pattern is no different from the Liberals?. It’s also interesting to note that the Democrats and Greens appear to do well out of reluctant voters. This doesn’t surprise me, since minor parties have traditionally absorbed protest votes from the politically disengaged. However, it runs contrary to Bob Brown’s argument that his support for compulsory voting must be founded purely on principle since his party has "the highest proportion of tertiary-educated voters who are most likely to vote without compulsion". I might have marked that down as self-serving spin, but Antony Green also reckons that "the only party certain to benefit from voluntary voting would be the Greens, who have by far the highest ratio of members to voters of any Australian political party". I hesitate to say that an argument of Antony’s does not persuade me, but I still need to be sold on this one. While it is true that the party has a large activist support base, this does not preclude the possibility that just as many of its voters are alienated and disengaged, and that it receives relatively little support from those who fall in between.
One thing past experience makes clear is that electoral reform is governed by the law of unintended consequences, as demonstrated by the parties’ repeated failures to skew the system in their favour. Malcolm Mackerras notes in Crikey that the last two substantial changes to the system – the expansion of Parliament in 1984 and the introduction of semi-proportional representation to the Senate in 1948 (note the eerie Orwellian inversion of those two dates) – were introduced by Labor governments acting out of perceived self-interest, but they have resulted in fairly regular Senate majorities for the Coalition and none for Labor. By the same token, the conventional wisdom that Labor would suffer under voluntary voting might well be misplaced. Antony Green observes that turnout at this year’s British election was especially low in Labour strongholds, suggesting compulsory voting would have boosted their share of the national vote without having much effect on seat totals. By extension, voluntary voting in Australia could cut margins in safe Labor seats without having a substantial impact in marginals.
There are countless other imponderables, such as the impact it would have on the way parties operate. The need to mobilise voters might even compel Labor to re-engage with the world beyond its internal culture and the attendant bastardry and skulduggery that we’ve been hearing so much about lately.
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Voluntary voting might cause both the Coalition and Labor to ‘re-engage with the world’. In Britain the major parties have had to keep their ideological frames for much longer in order to keep their voters motivated to go to the polls. Eg Even Tony Blair’s New Labour had to promote itself, at least to its supporters, as a new way of thinking about socialism (he used that word a lot around 1997 – probably less now).
Maybe having to re-engage with National Party voters is precisely what Ron Boswell fears. For the Nats that would mean re-engaging with those who think it should still be the Country Party. It would mean motivating those who didn’t want to sell Telstra or dismantle the edifice of Agrarian socialism, which might require the Nats to take potentially Coalition splitting stances.
The introduction of voluntary voting would be the final step in Australia’s maturing as a liberal democracy. Compulsory voting is a monolith from the days when parliamentarians did not trust the electorate to turn out and vote as they wished. Tim is spot-on when he says that the main parties might re-engage with the world is they new their sheep-like core constituency weren’t guaranteed to wander down to the booth every three years. This is probably what the main parties fear more than anything.
The right not to go to the polls is as important as the right to go.
Just to clarify my own position, I don’t think that compulsory voting is a particularly onerous imposition on the citizenry. Personally I’d trade off compulsory voting in exchange for a drastic lowering of the voting age (votes for kids!) but that’s not going to happen. Voluntary voting would cause short run pain for present politicians whose supporters are pissed off at them for specific reasons ie the Nats with the Telstra sale and rural voters, Tony Blair with the Iraq war and the British Left. In the long run voluntary voting by itself won’t re-engage the population – it might even do the opposite.
The Greens/Dems result is interesting. It gels with opinion poll results that found high levels of support for the US alliance among Green voters despite the party’s distinctively ‘anti’ public position.
If just as many of [the Green's] voters are alienated and disengaged [as part of its activist support base], and that it receives relatively little support from those who fall in between, then why do they have more maybe/maybe not as definitely?
BTW: Am I the only one that the graph disappears for in the comments view?
T: My typology of the “activist support base”, the “alienated and disengaged” and “those who fall in between” does not correspond with the one shown in the graphs. The activist support base – by which I basically mean their membership (following on from Antony) – are a very small number, whereas the “defintely” category on the graph accounts for about 70 per cent of the total. “Those who fall in between” are the majority in the former typology, but I’m positing it might be a smaller majority in the case of the Greens.
No, you’re not the only one having problems with the graph. Must look into that – thanks for bringing it to my attention.
I too agree with TD that fear of voluntary voting is probabaly a fear of an electorate they can no longer engage with (same for the ALP?). But bringing in voluntary voting won’t make that happen. Major parties in Britain are no more engaged with the electorate than in Autralia (in fact probably less so).
What does happen in Britain is that the non-voting public get blamed for the weak state of the political classes. We see signs of it here e.g. the implication of Bob Brown’s assertion that his “educated” supporters are more likely to vote, or Latham’s crude caricature of the 4WD-owning apathetic majority in his recent speech.
You really shouldn’t take data from surveys on “would you vote if was not compulsory” too seriously. Ask yourself, who is responding to the survey in the first place (the AES is a mail-out/mail-back, self-completion) survey: people with more or less interest in politics than average? You can use weighting etc to try and deal with this form of bias (non-response bias), but in general, I think it is pretty clear that the overall rate of voluntary voter turnout produced by surveys are hefty over-estimates.
Second, even among those responding to the survey question, there is a considerable amount of “over-reporting”, to put it politely; even from behind the veil of anonymity one enjoys as a survey respondent, the social pressures to say “the right thing” are considerable, and of course, taking an interest in politics is what all good citizens are supposed to do. This too, leads to an overestimate, and one that may even lead to an overestimate of the Liberal voluntary turnout rate (i.e., well-to-do Liberal voters are more sensitive to the social desirability pressures, and more likely to overstate what they would really do if voting wasn’t compulsory). I actually think Howard (and other hard-headed people in the Liberal Party) know that “his people” (Liberal voters) are unlikely to voluntarily turn out at the rates reported in surveys.
On all this and more, see my article, ‘‘Non-Compulsory Voting in Australia?: what surveys can (and can’t) tell us.’’ 1999. Electoral Studies. 18:29-48. Or e-mail me if you want an off-print of this.
Can’t argue with any of that, Simon. I’ll definitely hunt your article down, and get back to you if I can’t find it.
Mind you, I wouldn’t reject out of hand the possibility that the survey results might be a broadly useful indicator of which parties’ supporters would and wouldn’t turn out to vote, as they are consistent with my expectations.
Not sure you’ll find this estimable, but my take is to be ware of that survey data as any permanent reflector of behaviour. First, Labor will be in a cycle of weakness as long as it is deflated and losing and appearing not to stand for anything -but backfooted oppositions always are. Second, the ‘apoliticals’ (the norm?) who respond to such a survey after the poll is more likely to feel certain of their conviction if it was reinforced by the fact they backed a winner. (Lib/LNP). Recall that polls always show that people on all sides overestimate the chances of their preferred party winning prior to an election – what is the psychological effect of learning they were mistaken. Perhaps exit polling would better measure disgruntlement with compulsion.
The Loughnane/$$ conspiracy against voluntary voting rings only partially true. The Parliament could easily pre-legislate to say ‘the kitty for the election will be $42m, same as 2004, and will be divided afterwards in proportion to votes’. Setting a $/vote figure, with indexing to one-hundreth of a cent, serves no purpose really as long as we have compulsory voting (guaranteeing 95% turnout) and parties, rather than candidates, grab the loot.
More likely the party machine/s are nervous about their ability, with minimal members, to ‘get out’ the vote, and of a cultural aversion Australians would have to practices used elsewhere (door-knocking, targeting sympathisers, offering lifts etc) given we’ve so long seen voting as a very private affair, albeit done on a dutiful stroll to the local school.
My take is that the truly hard heads in the Liberals would take data like the AES results with a grain of salt. They must know compulsion often aids the party in power, which otherwise tends to leach votes of lukewarm supporters. The conservatives represent the status quo federally, and almost always have – so they have reasons to prefer compulsion. Howard increasing his vote in the past two polls doesn’t disprove this. Howard (like any long-term successful leader) has built success not on a deeply partisan or passionate base, but on appealing to ‘apoliticals’ – people under-reflected in opinion polls, but who come polling day, turn out in ways that boost him by the percent or two that makes all the difference. Which is just another way to say people tend to vote negatively, and that voluntary voting accentuates intensity of voting preference rather than measuring ‘one-citizen, one-preference’.