In the middle of the 19th century the south-eastern mainland states of Australia gave every man a vote, and the secret Australian ballot transformed voting practices.

In the 1890s, South and Western Australia followed New Zealand in giving women the vote.

These democratic achievements led the world and shaped the nation created in 1901 when the colonies federated.

Democracy was in its blood and the experiments continued.

Australia was the first nation to give women the right to stand for parliament, and the first to establish a national non-partisan electoral machinery.

The Australian delegation to the International Woman Suffrage Alliance Congress in Rome in 1923. ( Supplied: National Library of Australia )

It paid close attention to potential barriers to voting of distance, literacy and mobility.

It made it compulsory to be on the electoral roll, legislated for Saturday polling days and introduced preferential voting.

In his 1921 comparative study of modern democracies, the British liberal political historian James Bryce wrote that this "newest of all the democracies ... has travelled farthest and fastest along the road which leads to the unlimited rule of the multitude".

All this was achieved well before 1924, when Australia adopted compulsory voting.

Compulsory voting didn't happen by accident

Advocacy for compulsory voting began in the last few decades of the 19th century, but the reform faced a number of hurdles: its sheer novelty, its break with British precedent, practical considerations about enforcement, and Labor's stubborn opposition to postal voting.

A few people worried about the infringement of liberty, but not many, and none mounted a well-developed philosophical case against the government compelling people to vote.

Federalism complicated matters, as did World War I, but the deep currents of Australian political life were carrying us forward to the day in July 1924 when we adopted compulsory voting.

A Labor campaign poster circa 1928 shows how they tried to lure voters. ( Supplied: National Library of Australia )

This was not, as has sometimes been claimed, an accidental decision carelessly made by inattentive parliamentarians, but the result of Australia's confidence in government, its commitment to majoritarian democracy, and its willingness to experiment with electoral matters.

Our early federal politicians were proud of Australia's reputation as a democratic laboratory.

Determined to create a fair and accessible electoral system, they tinkered away until they got it right.

Between 1901 and 1924 parliament passed 24 acts on electoral matters, and considered another 12 unsuccessful bills.

Subsequently, the spirit of incremental innovation was applied to the Senate, with the introduction of proportional representation in 1948, and more recently in the tinkering with above- and below-the-line voting.

As problems emerge and priorities change, Australian politicians have been willing to innovate.

How compulsory voting shaped Wentworth

On October 20, 2018 Kerryn Phelps narrowly defeated Dave Sharma in the Wentworth by-election.

The Liberals had held the seat since Robert Menzies founded the party in 1945 and went into the contest with a margin of almost 18 per cent.

The circumstances were unusual, with the by-election caused by the resignation of the sitting member, Malcolm Turnbull, after the Liberal party room turned against him and he resigned as prime minister.

Nevertheless, Phelps's victory shows us another general benefit of compulsory voting: it makes it easier for new entrants, both parties and independents, to contest seats.

In a short campaign, run without the backing of a major party, Phelps had to raise money, and to recruit and organise campaign workers; but she did not have to register voters or get them to the polls, just persuade them to give their vote to her.

Phelps's election victory was the result both of the shambles and division in the federal Liberal Party and of longer-term trends.

Staying engaged in an era of distrust

One of the things political parties do in a democracy is connect ordinary people with the political elites and the processes of government, giving them a team to identify with and people who seem a bit like them at the heart of things.

For some time, however, our three dominant parties, Labor, Liberal and the Country Party turned National, have been doing this for fewer and fewer people, with each suffering declines in brand loyalty.

Since 2010, the number of rusted-on, lifelong party voters has plunged.

Fewer people report very strong levels of partisanship, more are splitting their vote between the House of Representatives and the Senate, and fewer are following the parties' how-to-vote cards.

Party volunteers continue to hand out how-to-vote cards. ( ABC News: Lily Partland )

Accompanying this loosening of party loyalties has been a general decline in trust for our major institutions in politics, business and the media.

Without compulsory voting, many disillusioned voters would turn away from politics altogether and stop voting; but because they have to find someone to vote for, new contestants, many from outside the established political class, enter the fray to pick up their protest and offer an alternative.

This is a very good thing.

There are many reasons to be frustrated with Australian politics in the second decade of the 21st century, as we suffer our sixth prime minister in eight years, but our electoral system is not one of them.

What the story of compulsory voting tells us is how very good we are at elections.

We should celebrate it.

Judith Brett is an emeritus professor of politics at La Trobe University. This is an edited extract from her new book, From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting.