Half a million Australians have voted in the first 24 hours of pre-polling for the federal election. The Australian Electoral Commission expects around half of Australia’s more than 18-million eligible voters to cast their ballots before election day on May the third. Head of politics at Monash university, Zareh Ghazarian says the big numbers reflect a change in voting behaviour.
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00:00Australians are taking advantage of voting the casting their vote much earlier than they would
00:09otherwise in the past and I think that also speaks to how people are looking at politics
00:15and engaging with politics as well it suggests to us that people have already made up their mind
00:20and no matter what the parties or candidates say from this point on it's not going to really change
00:26people's voting intentions so while May the 3rd is of course official election day I think we can take
00:33it as being the last day to vote rather than election day it's a huge risk that voters are
00:39taking by voting early primarily because a candidate or a party might say or do something that they don't
00:46necessarily agree with or the person that they didn't intend to vote for provides a reason for
00:53them to support that candidate so it is a real risk to vote before the full election campaign has
01:01concluded also I think it does take away from this community idea of what elections are and we're very
01:10fortunate in Australia there is of course compulsory voting as well so to maximise the impact that people
01:17can have by debating by thinking about the policies and really by engaging in the democratic process
01:24will be diminished if people keep on voting early I think this is the the real challenge that the way
01:31in which votes are counted if people are voting in other electorates those votes will then of course
01:37they will all be counted but it will potentially make the final outcome about who wins the seats and
01:45ultimately who wins government it may potentially take a bit longer um as as the votes have to be
01:53counted they will all be counted but it just might be delayed
01:56you
01:59you