William Boothby's 1850s South Australian secret voting system spreads across world as the 'Australian ballot'

Historian Judith Brett's 2019 book highlights the role of the secret ballot, first employed in South Australia by William Boothby (left), in developing Australian democracy.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

William Boothby, the commissioner in charge of every South Australian parliamentary election from 1856 to 1903, pioneered the secret ballot system that was followed later by the rest of the world.

On April 2, 1856, South Australia enacted a law introducing the secret ballot that had been adopted two weeks earlier in Victoria. But Boothby developed the system and prepared the clauses of the South Australian Act 1856 that instituted voting by ballot.

In 1858, Boothby introduced placing of a cross against the name of the favoured candidate on pre-printed ballots papers that would be place in sealed box.

This was a big change from the British practice where voters assembled at election centres and called out the name of their chosen candidate. That public process made the voter vulnerable to bribery and intimidation. A secret ballot was one of six demands of Chartism that the British parliament refused to consider in 1842.

Boothby’s system was adopted for federal government elections in Australia when he was the state returning officer for the first House of Representatives election in 1901. The South Australian federal seat of Boothby was named in his honour in 1903.

First used by South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania, the “Australian ballot”, as it became known internationally, was later adopted by other Australian colonies, by New Zealand in 1870, United Kingdom 1872, Canada 1874 and a United States of America presidential election in 1892. Seven USA states didn't have government-printed ballots until the 20th Century. South Carolina created them in 1950, Georgia in 1922.