What Democracy Looks Like

Republicans around the country have put a lot of effort in recent years into enacting laws that limit voter access to the polls, with the GOP accelerating these vote suppression efforts in swing states in time for year’s midterm elections. So in other words, for the modern Republican Party, making it harder for people to vote (especially those who aren’t likely to vote for you) is what democracy looks like.

I stumbled onto a different view of what democracy looks like as I was ambling through Terminal 3 at Perth Airport in Western Australia last week. I happened upon Gate 22 — which had been temporarily converted into a polling place for early voting in upcoming state elections. Voting at the airport!

It is worth noting that Australia has a system of compulsory voting (if you don’t have an acceptable documented excuse for failing to vote you pay a fine), and that arguably obliges the government to make voting as readily available as possible. Also, Western Australia’s economy with its reliance on mining and energy spread over a large territory has a lot of so-called “fly-in, fly-out” workers who come and go to work by air for lengthy intervals. The opportunity for these workers to meet their voting obligation at the airport makes good sense, as Perth discovered in last fall’s Australian federal election.

It turns out, though, that airport voting isn’t unique to that western side of Australia with its mining economy; in the most recent federal election early voting sites were set up at major airports (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and others) in every Australian state.

In the U.S. right now, democracy (in the view of one major political party) means rigging public policy to keep people away from the polls. In Australia, democracy means creating opportunities to vote that reach people where and when they are. Making it hard to vote vs. making it easier to vote … hich smells more like real, functioning democracy?

[Plus in Australia you get to choose on the ballot among all these groovy political parties!]

A version of this post appears on the Nashville Scene‘s Pith in the Wind blog.