Foolestroupe and I have posted elsewhere on Mudcat about the intricacies of the Oz system but I can't (at the moment) find the posts, so here is an interim quickie.

In Oz, turning up at the Ballot Booth (or sending in a Postal Ballot) is compulsory. Once in the Booth Electoral officials will check your name against the Electoral Roll, ask whether you have already voted and, if you haven't, issue you with the relevant Ballot Papers (which they initial as they do so) and tick your name on the Roll. You then go to an empty cardboard cubicle and follow the instructions to cast a valid vote. Or not, if you want your vote to be regarded as "Informal" and thus not validly cast nor counted. Either way, you then fold the papers and, separately, place them in the appropriate Ballot Boxes under the eye of an official and leave the booth. If you damage a Ballot Paper you can surrender it to an Official who will destroy it and issue you with a replacement; you are not allowed to remove Ballot Papers from the Booth.

After the election, Electoral Officers will go through the Roll and ensure that all the names have been ticked; these days it's done 'digitally' in the same way that exam papers are marked. This can take a while as any electorate (what US voters call a precinct) can have many Polling Booths and larger centres (eg capital cities) will have desks with copies of all Rolls to cope with Absentee Voters. Any names not ticked at the end of all this will be sent a "Please Explain" and, if you don't send an acceptable response you are liable for a $50 fine.

Depending on how the wider electorate feels about the need for the current election there may be up to 30% of people on the Rolls just not turn up and, among the voters who attend, many votes are cast informally (often categorised as "protest votes"). Informal gossip tells me that only a few people are ever fined or chased.

When I was first in South Carolina it was during Clinton's first Presidential race and many Americans were really enthusiastic about Australia's "compulsory" voting system but there are aspects I suspect US voters might not like. In Oz, there is a govt dept called the Electoral Office and the Commonwealth and State govts are required to maintain equivalence among electorates so that no one in a jurisdiction is more than 10% larger or smaller than the others (in terms of eligible voters) in that jurisdiction. This means that all citizens eligible to vote are required to maintain correct addresses on the respective Electoral Roll. There are some who might regard this as an infringement of their civil liberties.

Cheers, Rowan