Tomorrow, Saturday 3 May, is the federal election and the Australian Electoral Commissioner Jeff Pope has some reminders for voters on the big day.

Mr Pope is reminding enrolled Australians who are yet to cast their vote in the 2025 federal election to do so.

• It’s compulsory: Voting in the 2025 federal election is compulsory for the 18.1 million people on the electoral roll. Anyone who does not cast a vote will not only miss out on having their say in the election but will also receive a non-voter notice and may have to pay a fine.
• Election day opening hours: Polling places will be open from 8am to 6pm local time tomorrow. If someone is in the queue at 6pm local time, they will be able to cast their vote.
• Locations & accessibility information: Find your nearest early voting centre or polling place. Simply enter the location where you will be on election day, then follow the prompts to find your nearest voting centre. Click into the venue’s details to find out more information.
• Queues: Whenever there is a manual process where 18 million people effectively have the choice to turn up when and where they decide, there will be some queues. The AEC has done a range of work to minimise this wherever possible but is calling for patience if there is a queue.  Today being the last day or early voting is always incredibly busy and despite us having extra staff working we expect that there will be some queues, particularly this morning and late this afternoon.
• Respectful campaigning: Campaign workers are an important part of the federal election process. The AEC’s experience is that the vast majority of campaign workers and voters behave in a lawful and respectful manner. The AEC has been calling for respectful campaigning to occur since the start of the election period.  
• Casting a formal vote: The voting instructions are given to voters as they receive their ballot paper, printed on each ballot paper, on posters within polling places and have been the subject of significant advertising throughout the election.
  • Casting a formal vote
  • How preferential voting works
• Respecting election workers: Please be kind to AEC staff. There are around 100,000 temporary staff across the country – these people are everyday members of the community delivering a process to assist voters. They are politically neutral and deserve respect.
• Postal voters: It is too late to apply for a postal vote.
  
  Anyone who has applied for, and received, their postal vote must complete it and return it to the AEC as soon as possible. You must have completed your postal vote by 6pm local time on Saturday, but do not wait. The legislation allows up to 13 days after election day for postal votes to be received back to the AEC. Once a postal vote has been completed, voters should put them in the mail as soon as possible.
• Final early voting statistics: We’ll post these figures to our social media accounts early on Saturday. The downloads and statistics page of the AEC website will also be updated.
• The count: Our motto is ‘right, not rushed’. Information about the counting process – how it works, what is counted and when – was distributed earlier in the week.
  
  The counting process and complex count scenarios are also outlined on the AEC’s website.

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