'Choice of the Manner in Which Thou Wilt Die': The Australian Courts on Compulsory Voting

Abstract

This chapter explores judicial norms and rhetoric around compulsory voting in Australia. These legal principles and tropes are derived from two classes of cases. The first are decisions, from courts elevated in the hierarchy, about why compulsory voting is constitutionally legitimate. These decisions have survived a turn from respect for parliamentary sovereignty over electoral law towards implied political rights and freedoms. The second class of cases involve courts, both low and high in the judicial pecking order, reflecting on what amounts to a ‘valid and sufficient reason’ for not turning out to vote. Ultimately, the courts have been remarkably supportive of compulsion, albeit with a bleak, rather than positive, vision of the role of compulsion in electoral democracy. In rhetorical terms, Australian courts have treated electoral compulsion as akin to military conscription or to choosing the manner of one’s death.