Thread:Comments:High Court of Australia dismisses appeal against conviction, compulsory voting/Consideration of "human rights" requires conviction/reply (5)

As a practical matter &mdash; nothing to do with organic law &mdash; to make a democracy work one has to place a higher burden of consensus on some types of actions. That is, a robust democracy is not purely majoritarian. If a simple majority could take away the rights of the minority, the system would be inherently unstable. 'Individual rights' are a major class of things that must, for a robust democracy, require a higher level of consensus to tamper with.

The question raised by this case is, to my understanding, about the differential between different levels of consensus. Compulsory voting was imposed at the legislative level; Holmdahl claims that the right to decide whether or not one will vote requires a higher level of action than ordinary legislation.