Victoria’s elections of 1856 were its first held under responsible government and the first in the world to use the secret ballot. Voters in 1856 had to be over 21 years of age, male, and in possession of a certain amount of property. In 1857 this property qualification was removed for voters for the lower house – the Legislative Assembly, or ‘people’s house’ – resulting in ‘manhood suffrage’ and what Premier William Haines feared would be ‘a naked democracy’. But voting wasn’t compulsory and in early elections about two-thirds of those eligible to vote failed to do so.
Compared to Britain in the 1850s, a large percentage of Victorians had the right to vote. The colony was regarded from afar as ‘a sort of convex mirror’: a reflection of the mother country, but with a democratic twist.
Illustration
Elector’s Right issued to Rev. John E Herring, 1876
