If you are in COVID isolation and need to cast a ballot, here are the procedures.

Those Australians who have a positive COVID test this week will not be able to vote on Saturday because they will be quarantined.

During the first federal election that will take place while the pandemic is still active, residents of Australia who are quarantined due to COVID-19 will have the option to vote by mail or via an emergency telephone voting system.

Watch the video that can be found above for a walkthrough of how to vote in the upcoming federal election.

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An extension to the time frame for early voting has already been put into place, and early voting centers opened the previous Monday to help mitigate the problem of voters being isolated from one another.

Applications for voting by mail will be accepted until Wednesday at 6:00 p.m., for anyone who needs to isolate themselves from the beginning of the week.

Those who are required to be isolated as of the middle of the week onward will be eligible for an emergency phone voting option; however, in order to use this option, you will first need to demonstrate a couple of things.

The following is a rundown of everything you need to know in order to vote absentee.

Voting by phone is normally an option that is only available to voters who are blind or vision-impaired, but as of recently, it is also available to COVID-positive Australians who live in isolation.

Because it is an emergency option, the AEC requests that voters only cast their ballot over the phone if they have a positive test result after the registration period for postal voting has ended.

Am I eligible

If a voter tests positive for COVID after Tuesday night, they are eligible to vote over the phone for the remainder of the election.

On Wednesday evening at six o'clock, the deadline for registering to vote by mail, but the Australian Electoral Commission is providing an "overlap" to ensure that no one is left out.

If you take the test and find out it's positive on Monday and you don't register to vote by mail by Wednesday night, you won't be able to use the phone service on election day.

According to the spokesperson for the Australian Electoral Commission, Evan Ekin-Smyth, who spoke to 7NEWS, "people who test positive from Tuesday night onwards will be eligible." com au

"If we are being honest with ourselves, if somebody has a positive test at 5 58 minutes past midnight on Wednesday, we don't want to disconnect them. ”

How do I register

You will initially be required to complete the registration process on the AEC website.

Once the deadline for registering to vote by mail has passed, instructions for voting by phone during an emergency will be posted online.

To demonstrate compliance with the health order, you will need to conduct either a PCR or a rapid antigen test (RAT).

According to what Ekin-Smyth had to say, "Anything that you can register with a local health authority is fine with us."

A declaration of the date and time that you tested positive will be required of you, and "depending on the source of the test there could be a code" that you will be asked to provide.

You will be provided with a registration number and a PIN once your registration has been processed successfully.

Do you need to see my ID?

Just like at the traditional polling places, you won't need any kind of identification to vote.

"The process by which individuals are removed from the electoral roll over the phone is identical to the process by which individuals are removed from the electoral roll at polling places; consequently, there is no provision for voter identification." ”

In order to vote, you will be required to sign a statement stating "who you are, that you haven't already voted in the election, and where you live." ”

How do I vote

Thursday through Saturday, until the polls close at 6:00 p.m. on each of those days, registered voters with COVID will be able to use the phone service.

Once the service is ready for use, the AEC website will be updated with the relevant phone number for customers to dial.

You will be talking to a real person and not a piece of software, but the AEC warns that you might be put on hold for quite some time.

"This service will be provided by thousands of operators, and we will have thousands of them." ”

"It is a late-breaking emergency service, so we've been working with agencies across government to enable us to get thousands of operators to run this service," Ekin-Smyth said. "We've been working with agencies across government to enable us to get thousands of operators to run this service."

Because this is an emergency measure, there is a possibility that you will have to wait for a while; however, we will try our best to keep this delay to a minimum. ”

Your vote will be recorded by a voting assistant from the AEC. Your vote will be counted exactly as you intend it to be recorded thanks to a second voting assistant.

When you are finished casting your ballot, the voting assistant will place the completed ballot into a locked ballot box.

Come prepared

The regular phone service for blind and low vision voters, in which their ballot papers are read out to them, is not what the AEC has in mind for COVID-affected voters. The AEC "wants COVID-affected voters to come pre-prepared." ”

After you have registered with the AEC, a reproduction of the ballot papers used in your electorate will be made available on the website so that you can get ready.

Ekin-Smyth advised voters to "not jump on the phone until you've sorted that out" if they were uncertain about how the voting process worked.

This will help to cut down on the amount of time spent waiting on the phone.

"Come prepared, not only with an understanding of how the voting process works, but also with an understanding of where you will number your ballot paper." ”

In the video that can be found above, we provide a detailed explanation of the voting procedure that will be used in the upcoming federal election.

If you test positive for COVID before Tuesday night, you will need to apply for a postal vote in order to ensure that you will still be able to vote in the federal election that is taking place this year.

Voters who do not have any other voting options should be the only ones to submit applications at this late stage in the election period, according to Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers.

You can submit your request to vote by mail in this section.

Your postal vote pack for the upcoming federal election in 2022 will include one postal vote certificate, one green House of Representatives ballot paper that is attached to the postal vote certificate, and one white Senate ballot paper.

In addition, there will be a how-to guide and a return envelope included in the voting package.

You must complete your postal vote on or before election day On the day of the election, you have until 6 p.m. to sign the declaration section of your postal vote certificate.

Your postal vote must be received by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) no later than the thirteenth day after the election in order for it to be counted.

During this federal election, the counting of votes cast via postal ballots will begin on the Sunday afternoon following election day.

The AEC has thus far been in possession of approximately 2 5 million applications to vote by mail, which is an increase from 1 5 million in the most recent federal election in the year 2019

Even with 105,000 people on staff, Rogers said, "We simply cannot count postal votes on election night - we're already at the limits of our staffing capacity." Rogers added that the limits of their staffing capacity had already been reached. ”

Because of the high number of postal votes, it is less likely that an election night indication of who will form the government will be possible if the results in individual seats or overall in the House of Representatives are close. ”

Don't worry if you can't make it to an election party because it's likely that the count won't produce a winner on the night of the election anyway.