Voting started at 8 a.m. local time (2200 GMT) and will end at 6 p.m. (0800 GMT).<\/p>\n
Some 16.5 million Australians are registered to vote in the elections, which are compulsory.<\/p>\n
Citizens above the age of 18 are eligible to vote. Those who abstain from voting will be fined.<\/p>\n
Turks living in the country also went to the polls.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe joined Australia\u2019s elections. We cast our votes. Best wishes,\u201d Sedat Gucler, one of the Turkish-origin voters, told Anadolu Agency.<\/p>\n
Australia\u2019s parliament has 150 seats in the House of Representatives for which members are elected for a three-year term.<\/p>\n
Forty Senate seats from a total of 76 are also up for grabs.<\/p>\n
Australian authorities established early voting centers in the three weeks leading up to the polls for those who wanted to vote ahead of election day.<\/p>\n
Some 2.6 million people had cast their ballots by May 13.<\/p>\n
Australians can also post their votes to the election body until polls close on election day.<\/p>\n
The polls will decide whether the conservative Liberal Party led by current Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a policeman\u2019s son, will continue its term or if the Labor Party led by Bill Shorten will take over.<\/p>\n
Australia has seen six changes of prime minister in the past 12 years. The political instability in one of the world\u2019s oldest democracies is ascribed to internal party fights.<\/p>\n
After the voting period ends, first the House of Representative votes will be counted followed by the Senate.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australians are heading to the polls Saturday to choose a new parliament and prime minister. Voting started at 8 a.m. local time (2200 GMT) and will end at 6 p.m. (0800 GMT). Some 16.5 million Australians are registered to vote in the elections, which are compulsory. Citizens above the age of 18 are eligible to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":63755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36047,80,63,1,118,101],"tags":[74494],"class_list":["post-63754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-general","category-hot","category-politics","tag-australians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}