More than a million Victorians have already cast their vote for the state election on Saturday, a record number, the state’s electoral commission has said.
As of 3.30pm on Friday, 257,914 postal votes had been received, compared with 218,711 at the close of early voting in 2010. There have also been 844,743 early votes cast at the polling booths, compared with 549,772 in 2010.
There have been reports of long waits of up to an hour, particularly at the inner-city polling booths. The 2010 early voting number was surpassed by Wednesday night, and 1,102,657 votes have now been cast. About 3.8m Victorians have enrolled to vote.
This year’s early polling figures aren’t final – early poll booths are open until 6pm on Friday, and a few hours later for overseas voters.
But figures released on Friday suggest Labor is set for election victory and if it’s tight, it means Victorians may not have a final election result until early next week, once all the postal and early votes have been counted and preferences allocated.
Brian Costar, a professor of political science at Swinburne University, said pre-poll voting had become a worldwide trend. But it wasn’t without its setbacks, he said.
“What’s known as convenience voting is very much the flavour of the year,” he said. “It looks as though up to 30% of people will vote before polling day. That’s very high, and it creates a couple of problems. Once people vote, if they vote two weeks before polling day and something dramatic happens, they can’t say: ‘Please can I have my vote back’.
“Also, some of these pre-poll voting centres are taking so many votes that it’s impossible to count them and allocate preferences on the night.”
But there is a solution, Costar said. Since 2002, the Australian Capital Territory has allowed people to vote at pre-polling centres electronically, something Victoria already does for vision-impaired people, allowing those votes to be counted instantly on the night.
Due to the Electoral Act, ballot boxes cannot be opened progressively to count the vote.
