Australians make too little of the success of our democracy. So it is unsurprising that last month, the centenary of an event which profoundly shaped it passed uncelebrated and unnoticed. On July 31, 1924, the amendments to the Commonwealth Electoral Act which enshrined compulsory voting at federal elections came into effect.

Any well-informed American, British or other foreign political observer or journalist will usually speak of admiration for an electoral system which gives every citizen a sense that they have a stake in the democratic process; one which removes any possibility that the result’s legitimacy might be called into question by claims that, because of variabilities in turnout, it did not represent the true will of the people.

Compulsory voting has had a hugely stabilising effect on Australian democracy. Objections to compulsion are overcome by the fact – as every election pedant will tell you – that the obligation is not to vote, merely to take a ballot paper. It’s such an infrequent and low-level civic obligation that only the sternest of hard-core libertarians would object.

Meanwhile, as is our glorious national custom of taking the pomposity out of serious occasions, election day in Australia is something like a national fete as we troop to schools and community halls to be greeted not just by party workers, but volunteers on cake-stalls, selling raffle tickets and barbecuing the ubiquitous “democracy sausage”. The vaguely festive character of Australian election days is unique.

We insufficiently appreciate how innovative Australia has been in its electoral laws and systems. We were the first to introduce the secret ballot – which became known internationally as “the Australian ballot” – as long ago as 1856, in colonial Victoria. In 1894, South Australia became second only to New Zealand in enacting female suffrage.

By the early decades of the last century, Australia had become a laboratory of democratic experimentation as different jurisdictions not only extended the franchise, but introduced new variants to the standard voluntary first-past-the-post system used in Britain, the United States and elsewhere.

Apart from compulsory voting, our most important reform was the introduction, in 1918, of the preferential method of voting, following the recommendations of a royal commission on elections, which reported in 1915. This innovation has a very strange backstory.

The preferential system of voting resulted from the work of a 19th century mathematician, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who spent his life as a don at Oxford’s grandest college, Christ Church. Dodgson, who never married, was happiest in the company of young girls, whom he often sketched and photographed. He developed a particular fondness for the daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, Dr Henry Liddell.