In the remote Central Australian community of Santa Teresa, Raymond Palmer is helping translate information for other locals casting their vote.
"It's very important, you know, to make your vote count for the elections," he said.
"We encourage a lot of young ones at the school as well… teach them when they become adults they can come and vote."
Pre-polling is underway across the vast outback electorate of Lingiari, a seat that stretches 1.3 million square kilometres, taking in roughly 99 per cent of the Northern Territory and all the jurisdiction's remote Indigenous communities.
It also has the nation's lowest voter turnout.
Communities dotted across Lingiari are often hours — if not days — from the closest voting centre, long drives typically on rough, unsealed roads.
Here, voting isn't a simple process and the electorate relies on mobile teams.
In the 2019 election, more than a third of votes across the bush seat were taken by remote mobile teams: 10 times the percentage recorded in any other electorate.
Australian Electoral Commission deputy electoral commissioner Jeff Pope says there are currently 16 teams "roaming right across the Northern Territory" collecting votes.
The tyranny of distance
With less than a week to go until the federal election, one of the AEC's remote area mobile polling teams visited Santa Teresa, also known as the Ltyentye Apurte community.
The community is only 80 kilometres south-east of Alice Springs, but the drive is a bumpy and dusty one that takes its toll on the cars driven by residents.
Workers set up the community's polling centre in the local council's office, a banner hung on the fence outside, just down the road from the iconic church.
Inside, electoral commission staff wait to prepare locals to cast their vote at one of three cardboard booths.
The room is a much smaller than the early voting centres in Darwin or Alice Springs, but it's a mammoth task to set it up.
Neville Khan, senior engagement officer with the AEC's Indigenous electoral participation program described the exercise as "huge".
"A lot of that's to do with the tyranny of distance," he said.
Voting in language
It's not just the extreme distances of Lingiari that pose a challenge for electoral commission staff, they must also cater for different language groups spoken by residents.
Mr Khan said the AEC previously developed resources in languages to help people cast their vote.
"We can hand out [these resources] to voters as they come, and they're on an iPad in their local language, their first mother tongue," Mr Khan said.
But he said the organisation was also engaging local interpreters wherever possible.
Community cooperation
Mr Khan said the AEC had been developing partnerships with communities and community organisations to spread the message about the importance of voting.
"They've got a footprint on the ground in communities already," he said.
"We're utilising their services to try and promote what we need done."
Historically, voter enrolment in the Northern Territory has lagged behind the rest of the country.
In 2019, Lingiari had the lowest turnout of any federal electorate.
In an attempt to bolster enrolment numbers in the remote NT, which sat at 70 per cent less than a week before enrolments closed, last year the AEC re-established its Indigenous Electoral Participation Program.
Mr Khan said the pandemic and border restrictions made it challenging to reach voters.
"We're trying to get out into the communities as much as possible obviously over the last two years we've had COVID to deal with," he said.
"But this is where our partnerships come into play, and utilising them, so that they can help that enrolment drive in remote communities."
