Given the mischaracterisations and both personal and nationalistic slurs in this comment, we're clearly beyond being able to have a respectful discussion on this topic.
But for the sake of setting some points straight, and correcting a mistake on my part:
- Australia's basic human rights are inherited from British common law, which is argued by some (generally conservatives from what I can see) as in some ways preferable than rights encoded in a constitution or bill of rights. Reasonable people can and do debate that, but for however much this counts, the (hardly left-wing) Cato Institute rates Australia as 4th in the world on its freedom index [1]).
- I don't support selective enforcement; the article I linked showed that the law was enforced, it's just not a heavy-handed enforcement, and thus the spectre of jail is overblown.
- You're not forced to vote; you can lodge a blank form. You are just required show up (or send in a vote by post), or pay a $20 fine. Which, I agree, initially seems like a heinous impingement on freedom, until you realise it's the best protection we have of a more important freedom: that everyone has the right to vote without interference by political operators who would seek to manipulate the system to arbitrarily prevent certain people from voting.
- I was slightly mistaken about prisoners voting; prisoners on sentences greater than 3 years can't vote. So, murderers or other serious violent offenders aren't voting. But the potential for governments to manipulate elections via excessive incarceration is vastly reduced, which seems like something that should be important to people who worry about government intrusions on freedom (of which I'm one).
- I'm with you on the profound importance on free speech; I just think people who want to send a strong protest to government would be better off finding another hill to die on.
- "Moderate" and "balanced" are important concepts in political decision-making, and "reasonable"-ness is a core concept in common law.
Ultimately, systems should be judged on their outcomes.
I was previously (indeed quite recently) of the ideological persuasion that saw things like compulsory voting as an unconscionable breach of civil liberties.
I now recognise that virtues can only be measured in relation to other virtues they either impede or promote, and that in practice it turns out that, this particular infringement of civil liberties leads to a far more important benefit: a democratic system in which nobody is denied their right to vote, and a society that is widely regarded as being as free and well-functioning as any.
Which is not to say I make great criticisms of the U.S. I like the U.S., and whether I do or not it's not for me to say it should change.
I'm just pointing out that the odious spectres people invoke whenever compulsory voting is raised, turn out not to be problems in practice in Australia.
[1] https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/human-freedom-i...