Australian Ballot Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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The Australian Ballot is one form of the secret ballot, a method of voting where the voter’s choices are confidential. The purpose of the secret ballot is to ensure that voters will not be subjected to undue influence, as their vote will not be known to anyone else.

This voting method is known as the Australian Ballot because it originated in Australia during the 1850s. With this particular ballot, all candidate names are preprinted on a ballot provided by the government and given to the voter at the poll site. The voters then fill out their ballot in private.

In the United States, prior to the introduction of the Australian ballot, political parties and others would print ballots and distribute them to voters. In Great Britain and Australia, voters would hand in signed voting papers indicating their choice and their own name and address. The open vote made it possible to determine how voters cast their ballots, subjecting voters to bribery or intimidation.

Introduction Of The Australian Ballot

The introduction of the secret ballot was influenced by Chartism, a British working-class movement that advocated secret ballot elections. John Basson Humffray, a native of Wales and a member of the Chartist movement, moved to Victoria in Australia, where he became the leader of the Ballarat Reform League, an organization established to protest the colonial government’s treatment of gold miners. One of the league’s demands was the introduction of the secret ballot. Following an armed rebellion, the demands of the miners, including the call for the secret ballot, would soon me met.

The secret ballot was first adopted in Victoria, Australia, in December 1855, when the colony’s Legislative Council agreed to include the secret ballot in the new self-governing colony’s election law. Henry Samuel Chapman devised the system of the government-printed ballot, whose use spread across Australia over the next two decades.

The Australian ballot would be adopted in New Zealand (1870), Great Britain (1872), Canada (1874), and Belgium (1877). By 1896, all but four American states had introduced the Australian system (Brent 2005, 9).

Bibliography:

Brent, Peter. “The Secret Ballot—Not an Australian First.” 2005, www.enrollingthepeople.com.
Fredman, Lionel E. The Australian Ballot: The Story of an American Reform. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1958.
Wigmore, John Henry. The Australian Ballot Systen as Embodied in the Legislation of Various Countries. Boston: C.C. Soule, 1889.