How soon will we know the October 14 Voice to Parliament referendum result?

Aren't we all?

Polls have opened on referendum day and will close at 6pm sharp.

Electoral records are tumbling. According to the Australian Electoral Commission, Friday was Australia's biggest single day of pre-polling with just over 1 million votes cast. Before Saturday, a record 6.13 million people had voted at an early voting centre. For the May 2022 federal election, the early voters came in at 5.6 million.

The man in the hot seat is the Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers and around 2.1 million postal votes will likely have a lot to do with when we will find out if Australia voted for or against the Voice.

"People have asked me, 'will we get a result on the night?' And the answer is I don't know. It depends on how close the result is," Mr Rogers told reporters in Canberra.

OK, so if he is not sure, it will probably also trouble the ABC's esteemed election analyst Antony Green.

However, he told the ABC on Friday, "I would say one hour after the close of counting in each state - unless it is close, we should be able to call each state."

Here are the mitigating factors.

Voting on a referendum ballot is a relatively simple task compared to a general election. For this one, there is one question. The final tally of 17,676,347 enrolled voters are being asked to vote "yes" or "no" in English to this:

"A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

Do you approve this proposed alteration?"

So no big ballot paper with various candidates, group tickets, preferences and other activity.

READ MORE:

And bearing in mind that to change the constitution a double majority is required, that's a majority of votes in a majority of states without the Northern Territory and the ACT. Of course, Western Australia will be three hours behind the poll closing in the eastern states.

It still lends the mind towards a faster count.

"One would think that the results are going to come back in a lot quicker than they would on a general election," Mr Rogers said.

"The actual counting process involved in making a decision about "yes" or "no" is obviously going to be a lot less time intensive than normal votes."

But.

This referendum is a first on many counts. Enrolment is the highest it has been since Federation on many counts. Highest overall enrolment at 97.7 per cent. Highest youth enrolment at 91.4 per cent. Highest Indigenous enrolment at 94.1 per cent.

Postal vote applications ended up at around 2.1 million, according to the Australian Electoral Commission, and this is likely to have the biggest impact on when the Voice result will be announced.

"We can only count the votes that we have and so on the evening, we may have to wait for those votes to come back. But we won't know until the event," Mr Rogers.

"It could well be that we have to wait for the postal votes to return before results become clear and we have to wait for a full-13 day period under the law just to deal with that."

So that is just for the result itself, everything else has its challenges too. Logistics, staffing, misinformation, disinformation. It is a "complex undertaking," according to the commissioner. And the first "social media" referendum.

Over to you.