Chris Monnox on How Compulsory Voting Changed Our Elections | “Persuasion very much a secondary concern”

Compulsory voting is as Australian as the ‘democracy sausage’, but how did its introduction reshape the way our elections are fought?

On Afternoon Light #151 Georgina Downer meets with Dr Chris Monnox to explore how different polling day was a century ago. Back when our political parties used to focus on getting people out to vote - often quite literally in providing them with transportation - rather than persuading them who to vote for.

Chris is the author of ‘Letterboxes and Loudspeakers: Compulsory Voting and the Transformation of Grassroots Electioneering in Australia, 1910–51’, which appeared in the Australian Journal of Politics and History.