Last week, I sat on a couch with a view of the crenellations and spires of All Souls College, Oxford, and filled out an absentee ballot voting for Kamala Harris.

Because I’m registered to vote in Massachusetts, and because I live in a very small town where I know the town clerk by her first name, it was an easy thing to do. That’s not true everywhere. In some states in the US, casting a ballot has become an extreme sport, with queues hours long and laws making it a crime to give water to someone waiting or to save their place if they need to go to the loo. Australia’s sausage sizzles at polling places would probably be a felony, and being able to vote at the local surf club in a wet bathing suit on a weekend beach day is unimaginable in a country that statutorily mandates elections on a Tuesday.

Geraldine Brooks is a dual US-Australian citizen and has voted in he US election but, as she is not in a swing state, her vote “won’t count, not really”.Credit: Illustration by Michael Howard

All I’d had to do was stop by the town hall the week before I flew to England and apply for the ballot. As soon as it was available, the town clerk emailed it to me, and when I sent it back without the required cover sheet, she immediately informed me so that I could fix my........

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