There’s been a lot of angst in recent times about the way that technology has fragmented what used to be shared experiences. Instead of browsing in bookshops, we order books online; instead of going to the movies together we immerse ourselves in our home entertainment systems; instead of meeting real friends we get a simulated version on Facebook; and so on.

I think most of this concern is overblown, although there are some valid issues there as well. But it’s interesting to compare them with a change in the way elections operate. We don’t have electronic voting in Australia (for very good reasons, although that’s another story), but we do have a trend away from the communal experience of everyone turning up to a polling place on a particular day to cast their vote.

Given compulsory voting, it’s reasonable that governments do what they can to make that duty less onerous. Voters who are unable to get to a polling place on election day can apply beforehand for a postal vote, and nowadays they also have the option of going in person to a voting centre in the fortnight before polling day to cast a pre-poll vote.

The trend of both these methods is upwards, although not uniformly so.

In 1993, the first federal election with pre-poll voting, postals and pre-polls amounted to 6.1% of the total vote; last year that figure was 9.8%, down from 13.7% in 2007.

The unusually high number in 2007 could have been due to the election being in November, when people are perhaps more likely to be on holidays than they are in August, or it could have been a function of the greater enthusiasm generated in that election. But even with the lower 2010 figure, there’s something surprising in the idea that one voter in 10 is unable to be reach a polling place at any time on the Saturday.

In reality, although to get a postal or pre-poll vote you have to declare that you are unable to vote in the ordinary way, it suits the convenience of the electoral commission not to enforce or check this in any way. So much so that most discussions of pre-poll voting – for example, David Rood in last Friday’s Age — leave the impression that this is just another option voters have, with no restriction on eligibility.

The figure that stimulated Rood’s piece is from last year’s Victorian state election, where postals and pre-polls jumped to a remarkable 23.7% of the total, driven mostly by a doubling in the number of pre-polls. That’s certainly noteworthy, but as with anything to do with voting one should be careful of reading too much into a single result: it may signal a shift in the trend line, but it may just be a one-off.

If early voting does continue to grow, then I think there’s a legitimate concern about losing some of the communal experience of democracy. But if we’re going to depart from the one-day-for-everyone model of voting, then our pre-poll voting system is a good way to do it. Unlike with postal voting, people still vote in a public place, which removes concerns about intimidation, and they do so with conventional paper ballots, reducing the opportunity for fraud.

Moreover, because there are a lot fewer early voting centres than there are election day polling places, traffic at those centres is quite high — particularly in the last couple of days. So party workers come out with how-to-vote cards and something of the election day atmosphere is recaptured. Perhaps in time even sausage sizzles will be scheduled.

The fact that pre-poll is mostly concentrated towards the end of the period also means that any difference in their voting behavior due to having less complete information is likely to be very slight. Indeed, if more voters end up being immune from the tricks of the last week of campaigning, that might not be such a bad thing.

Of course it’s true that early voting shows different political patterns. Pre-poll and (especially) postal voters are better for the Coalition and worse for Labor than ordinary voters, since they tend to be wealthier and better-educated. (Pre-poll voters are also more likely to vote Green, but postal voters less likely.)

But that doesn’t mean that increasing their numbers makes a political difference: correlation isn’t causation. Voting early won’t alter your political views, but it might make you feel a bit less central to the democratic process.