8.5 million Australians cast their votes before election day

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Over 8 and a half million Australians have already cast their votes whether through postal or mobile voting, overseas ballots or at pre-polling centres. Some 10 million people, however, will be queuing at polling booths today and may even be partaking in the traditional Australian democracy sausage after casting their vote.

Transcript

00:00We're really pleased that we were able to run the pre-polling period without too many

00:05queues though and then there were some here or there because of the big increase.

00:10The other sting in the tail as well with pre-polling of course is the count.

00:14If we have some really big pre-poll counts, maybe 20,000, 25,000 odd, those results can

00:19drop quite late tonight so we're calling for a little bit of patience with the counting

00:23process.

00:24I want to come back to that in just a moment but let's talk about what's going to happen

00:27today.

00:28What message do you have for people who are heading to the polls today?

00:32What should they keep in mind?

00:33Yeah, well the polls are open in a lot of places, open 8am till 6pm local time.

00:40Make sure you plan your vote, you can go to aec.gov.au, put in the location where you're

00:44going to be and it brings up all the polling places that are near you.

00:48If you are interstate, you have to go to a specific interstate voting centre so make sure

00:52that you're careful about looking for those details and if you have any specific requirements,

00:57we have all the accessibility criteria, you've just got to click through on your venue and

01:01there's a full outline of what we have at each of those venues.

01:03Evan, there's also been reports recently of incidences of skirmishes or some violence

01:10and intimidation at pre-polling centres.

01:13Obviously you may have stepped up security around polling booths today to ensure that voting

01:19goes smoothly.

01:20It's really disappointing, isn't it?

01:23I think it has been isolated.

01:24It seems to be in those areas where there's a particularly heated sort of campaign, where

01:29there's lots of campaigning going on, some of the marginal seats.

01:32It's not really what Australian elections are famous for.

01:35We're famous for respectful campaigning, the fact that people can have high passions, absolutely,

01:41that's what you should have in an election, be passionate about your causes and your candidates,

01:44but you still should be able to have a yarn outside a polling place to someone who has

01:48the opposing view and not have an issue.

01:51So we have good relationships with local police forces, they're watching what's going on,

01:56the Electoral Integrity Assurance Taskforce is there and we can utilise agencies under that,

02:01but I don't think we want to get to a situation in Australia where we have security guards

02:04at polling places.

02:05That's not what Australian elections are about.

02:07So everybody, please behave respectfully.

02:09Let's talk about this campaign in the lead up to today, of course.

02:12There are these reports of a possible Russian chat bot that's been trying to influence the

02:18campaigns as well.

02:20Have you seen much AI influence or interference in the campaigning?

02:25No, we really haven't.

02:27We've put information out for voters to help them navigate through the information environment,

02:32help them stop and consider what they're seeing.

02:35Generative AI has been a point of conversation in the lead up to the election, but I think

02:39most people are using it for satirical purposes, so obviously false, just making a point but

02:44not actually trying to fool people.

02:47And while the information environment is quick, it's rapid fire and that's kind of the danger,

02:51so is the contextual clarification that comes on the back end or the correction.

02:55So we need to keep that in mind.

02:57And that particular instance that you're talking about, the task force looked at that and they

03:00found that the sort of influence that it's having is very minimal.

03:04And that particular thing is, it's important.

03:05I think it's possible that you don't have to be able to go to the end of the time.

03:06This is really important.

03:07Okay.

03:07So, I'll take the captioning in the comment section.

03:09One, two, three, five, five, six, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, six, Six,

03:10nine, seven, seven, eight, nine, seven, seven, eight.

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