Well, unless they voted early that is.

There were a lot of people who did that across the Illawarra electorates of Cunningham, Gilmore and Whitlam. In fact, when you take postal votes into account, more than half the Gilmore electorate has already voted.

So, for those happy to vote on election day and support your local school's P&C through buying a sausage, cupcake or maybe even a flat white, here's what you need to know.

There are heaps of polling places across the three electorates.

For the most part, they're at local schools, but they can also be community centres or even churches.

You can check out the full list of polling places at the Australian Electoral Commission site

Voting in Australia is compulsory - but you already knew that, right.

The polling places open at 8am and close at 6pm across all three electorates.

When you rock up at the polling place and get your name checked off, you'll be handed two ballot papers.

The smaller one - it's also green so it's easy to tell which one it is - is for the House of Representatives.

You need to place a number next to every candidate on the list. Yes, you may remember when you only had to number a single box - that was in the NSW government election. Just to confuse everyone, the state and federal elections are run under different systems.

So on Saturday make sure you number all the boxes - otherwise your vote doesn't count.

The other ballot paper - the really, really big one - is for the Senate. Here you can vote in two ways; either number at least six parties above the line, or at least 12 below the line.

It's up to you, but the six above the line is much easier.

Then you fold the two ballot papers up separately and put them in the appropriate ballot boxes.

Now you've earned yourself a democracy sausage - go and get one.

Really, that's up to you. It's not something we can decide for you.

But if it helps, check out the linked information on the Cunningham, Gilmore and Whitlam electorates.

And here's a list of the candidates running in each seat.

After a polling place closes at 6pm on election night AEC polling officials open and empty House of Representatives ballot boxes. Ballot papers are unfolded and all the number '1' votes (first preferences) are put into separate piles for each candidate and counted.

Following the first preference count, AEC staff then conduct what is called a two-candidate-preferred (TCP) count. This involves the distribution of every formal ballot paper to one of the two candidates (whoever has the higher preference) predicted to be the leading candidates in the contest.

The TCP count is a mandatory requirement and is conducted to give an early indication of who is most likely to win each seat, as this is not always clear from first preferences.

Then there is the issue of those votes cast on election day in an electorate other than the one the voter lives in. They are securely packaged, transported back to the relevant AEC counting centre and validated against the electoral roll.

In addition, hundreds of thousands of postal votes will be delivered to AEC counting centres each day to also be receipted and validated against the electoral roll before they can be counted.

Every vote in the House of Representatives election is counted more than once. This mandatory second count is called "fresh scrutiny" and provides confirmation of the original count and starts on the Monday after election night.

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