How long is a piece of string? In the case of the coming federal election, it’s 140 kilometres! That’s how much string will anchor the the 100,000 pencils the Australian Electoral Commission is distributing for voters to mark their voting slips on September 7. The logistical task of organising an election has never been greater, according to the commission, which is busy delivering the Official Guide to the Federal Election to 9.7 million Australian households. If that isn’t enough, you can always go to the commission’s website to gain access to digital formats of the guide. Around 70,000 polling officials will be required to oversee events on election day, and almost 50,000 of them already signed up. About 50,000 ballot boxes have been hammered together and are being distributed across the land, and more than 43 million ballot papers – just to be sure, to be sure – are being sent out to cater for voting for the House of Representatives and Senate polls.
Voters won’t be short of choice.
A record 1717 nominations were accepted and declared from independent candidates and from the 54 political parties registered for the election. That’s more than double the number of parties registered to contest the 2010 federal election.
There are more voters than ever before, too. Around 14.7 million Australians are enrolled, and many thousands chose the last minute to get themselves on the roll: in the 24 hours before the rolls closed, 71,000 new voters rushed to submit their names, and another 118,000 updated their details.
Postal voting is already under way: the commission has processed 685,000 applications, almost half of which are via the internet.
Full Article: How long is a piece of electoral string?.