What’s the democracy sausage, Australia’s favourite election day tradition?

In Australia, casting your vote often comes with a dash of tomato sauce, a handful of onions, and a grilled sausage wrapped in bread. As election day unfolded on Saturday, Aussies queued up to cast their votes, and what followed was a tradition that some consider just as important. Enter, ‘Democracy Sausage’.

These sausage sizzles, affectionately known as “snags in bread”, are spotted right outside polling booths. Over time, they’ve become a national, if light-heated, symbol for electoral participation.

And it might sound quirky, but the phrase “democracy sausage” was actually chosen as Australia’s Word of the Year in 2016, proving just how firmly it’s grilled into the nation’s culture.

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“It’s practically part of the Australian Constitution,” jokes a website that tracks democracy sausage stands across the country in real time during elections.

But where did this tasty tradition start? And how did it become such a central part of Australia’s election day experience? Here’s a closer look.

Voting served on a plate

At its core, the democracy sausage is exactly what it sounds like, a sausage, typically grilled on a barbecue, served on a slice of white bread with optional onions and sauce. But its meaning goes beyond the bun.

These sausage sizzles are set up by local organisations like schools, sports clubs, or charities outside polling places. They’re a clever way to raise funds while bringing the community together, all while voters queue up to fulfil their civic duty.

And they’re not just found on street corners around Melbourne or Sydney. This year, democracy sausages made their way to Australian embassies and voting centres around the world—from New York and Tokyo to Riyadh and even Antarctica.

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The tradition got a digital boost back in 2013, when a group of friends were trying to figure out which polling places were serving food. Since there was no easy way to find out, they created one—an apolitical, nonpartisan site called democracysausage.org, as spokesperson Alex Dawson told AP.

Now, the site doesn’t just map out sausage stalls—it also flags whether they’ve got gluten-free, vegan, or halal options, plus extras like cake and coffee. Basically, it turns voting into a mini food crawl.

“We’ll usually rope in a few friends to keep an eye on incoming submissions about either stalls that we don’t already know about, or tip-offs to find out if a location has run out of sausages,” Dawson said. The team always takes time out to vote—and naturally, grab a sausage too.

At the 2022 election, the site logged over 2,200 sausage stalls across the country’s 7,000 polling places. And those stalls pulled in about AU$4.1 million for the community groups running them.

A sizzling history of the tradition

No one’s entirely sure who first came up with the phrase democracy sausage, but the idea of grabbing a bite while casting your ballot has deep roots in Australia’s electoral history.

According to Judith Brett, professor of politics at Melbourne’s La Trobe University and author of From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting, fundraising snacks have been part of polling places for nearly a century.

A picture from 1928, taken at the old Atherton Courthouse in Queensland, which shows women serving cakes and drinks at a polling booth—likely to raise money for their community.

But what really gave the tradition legs, was the introduction of compulsory voting in 1924. With most Australians required to vote—and elections held on Saturdays—polling day quickly became a family outing. Parents show up with their kids, sometimes their dogs, and plenty of time to kill while waiting in line.

In the early days, it was cakes, jams and handmade goods. But by the 1980s, the rise of the portable gas barbecue meant sausages became the crowd-pleaser of choice. Cheap, quick to cook, and deliciously nostalgic, they soon became the staple of polling places across the country.

“It’s something that binds everyone together,” said Alex Dawson, one of the volunteers behind the popular website democracysausage.org.

For younger voters and social media natives, the sausage has even helped breathe fresh life into the voting experience.

“It has been a way, I think, of connecting a younger generation, a social media generation, into the civic rituals of election day,” Brett said.

Australian Elections: An overview

This year’s federal election, held on Saturday, May 3, is one of the most tightly contested in recent memory.

Key issues dominating the conversation include the cost of living, housing affordability, climate change policy, and an increasingly tense China-US dynamic.

All 150 seats in the House of Representatives are on the line, along with 40 of the 76 Senate seats. To form a government, a party needs 76 seats. Labor currently holds 78—but thanks to a recent redistricting, one seat has been scrapped, meaning even a loss of two could tip them into minority territory.

The Coalition, on the other hand, holds 57 seats and needs to flip at least 19 to take power. That includes winning back many of the seats they lost to independents last time around.

As soon as the polls close, vote counting kicks off. The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) will provide real-time updates through the night. While early results can hint at the outcome, the full count,especially with nearly 18 million ballots to process, including postal and overseas votes, can take days, even weeks, to finalise.

With input from agencies