Polling is underway for Parliament elections in Australia. Voters will elect MPs for all the seats in the House of Representatives and just over half the seats in the Senate. Voting is compulsory in Australia and about 17 million people are expected to cast a ballot this time around.
According to media reports, the first polling stations is scheduled to close on the country’s east coast at 6 p.m. local time (08:00 GMT). The west coast is two hours behind.
Due to the pandemic, more than 48 percent of Australia’s 17 million electors have voted early or applied for postal votes, which will likely slow the count. Voting is compulsory for adult citizens and 92 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the last election.
The Australian Electoral Commission said, all votes cast today will be counted tonight along with the majority of pre-poll votes. However, the poll body said that there will be large pre-poll counts that won’t be available until later in the evening. The count begins when polls close and ceases at midnight. Postal votes will not be counted until tomorrow afternoon, meaning in seats where the results go down to the wire would be unlikely to be declared tonight.
Australia, a federation of six states, follows the Parliamentary system. It has 151 seats in the House of Representatives. The main political contenders are the ruling Liberal-National coalition and Labour. Either party will need to win at least 76 of the 151 seats in the House of Representatives to form a majority government. The election is also being held for 40 out of 76 Senate seats.