The right to vote, without discrimination, is set out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (article 25) and the International Covenant on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (article 5(c)).

Australia has signed both of these covenants. Voting is a hard won right. Women in Australia, after decades of struggle, won the right to vote at different times in each state. South Australia granted women the right to vote in 1894; Western Australia followed suit in 1899, and New South Wales in 1902. That same year women Australia-wide were granted suffrage in Commonwealth elections. Strangely, this meant that women in Victoria could legally vote in federal elections, but not state elections.

Indigenous women had to wait until 1962, when the repeal of the 1902 Commonwealth Act gave Aborigines in all states, except Queensland, the right to vote.

Prisoners serving sentences of more than three years are not allowed to vote in Australia and there is debate as to whether this is right, because denying the right to vote does not assist with social reintegration and rehabilitation of prisoners.