Australian Electoral Commission officials would be legally prevented from encouraging people to vote early if the next federal election was called before the COVID-19 pandemic was contained.
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A pandemic election could also add up to $30 million to the cost, officials told Senate estimates on Thursday night.
Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers told the Finance and Public Administration committee preparations had already begun for the next federal election, despite Prime Minister Scott Morrison pledging to go full-term.
The latest possible date for a half-Senate and House of Representatives election would be May 21, 2022, and the government is banking on a COVID-19 vaccine becoming available next year.
If this fell through though, it would have an enormous impact on the federal election, Mr Rogers said.
Queues could be longer and counting could be slower, if social distancing restrictions were still in place.
There would need to be fewer scrutineers in the counting centres and fewer booths within a polling centre. Staff members would also need increased training.
"The list is a bit endless," he said.
The AEC would also need to liaise with local authorities in each state and territory "far more than we've ever done before", Mr Rogers said.
The personal protective equipment and hygiene measures could help add $30 million to the cost of the election, bringing the likely total to around $400 million.
That cost could be higher again if more people cast postal votes as they did with the Eden-Monaro byelection.
"If that increases dramatically, that will also have an impact on cost, I guess. And also processing times, too," Mr Rogers said.
Commonwealth electoral laws prevent the Electoral Commission from telling people to vote early.
Under the legislation, voters are allowed to cast their ballots early if they will be far from a polling booth on election day, are travelling, in prison, at work, about to give birth or it may conflict with their religious beliefs.
This is in contrast to Elections ACT which was actively encouraging Canberrans to pre-poll in order to spread the surge of voters over three weeks.
About 63 per cent of Canberrans voted ahead of last Saturday's election.
"We don't do that Senator, the Electoral Act doesn't allow for for that. We point out what people's options are to vote but we also put out the criteria and we ask people to self identify against that criteria when they turn up to vote. That's a very different approach," Mr Rogers said.
"If there is a pandemic, if there are pandemic related restrictions we'll encouraging people to plan a vote, which is a slightly different thing and that's what we did in Eden-Monaro and that's about thinking about the various options that you've got in how you cast that ballot.
Ahead of last weekend's poll, Elections ACT spokesman Evan Ekin-Smyth said the high number of early and electronic votes would likely lead to faster results.
"We'll be able to display the results from all electronic votes cast at early voting centres within one to two hours of the polls closing. This will include a preliminary distribution of preferences," he said.
"It is certainly more results data provided at that early stage on election night than what is common with entirely paper-based electoral systems."
Mr Rogers said there was an increasing demand for fast electoral results.
" One of the one of the issues with citizens, and I absolutely understand it, is that even though they might have voted by pencil and paper at 5pm, in the afternoon, at five minutes past six, there's this demand of 'where's the result, it must be something wrong'," he said.
"So the sooner we can provide that result, the better it is for us, the better it is for the reputation of the electoral system."
The electoral commission has put a proposal to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters's inquiry into the future conduct of elections during emergency situations that would allow them to count pre-poll votes earlier.
"The more votes that are in envelopes either postal votes or pre-poll votes, the harder it is for us to complete the kind of count we've done on the night where people get a broad indication of governance on the evening," Mr Rogers said.
"And that's why we'd like to do some stuff differently eventually with pre-poll to be ready to count them at 6pm so that ... Australians can go to bed, kind of knowing where things sit without having to wait for some time."
