In Australia, voting day isn’t simply a matter of voting but it often involves a grilled sausage in bread, topped with onions and a sprinkle of tomato sauce. While Australians waited in line to vote on Saturday, many were anticipating a much-loved tradition: ‘The Democracy Sausage’.
These popular sausage sizzles, which are also referred to as ‘snags in bread’, usually stand outside polling booths. With time, they have become representative of civic responsibility in a delicious and enjoyable manner.
Indeed, the word ‘democracy sausage’ was voted Australia’s Word of the Year in 2016, demonstrating just how much it’s embedded in national culture. “It’s basically part of the Australian Constitution,” jokes a site that monitors such stalls in real time during elections.
Story Behind the Sausage Tradition
A democracy sausage is just what its name suggests: a barbecued sausage served on a white bread slice with extras such as sauce and onions available. It’s more than a snack, though, it’s a community ritual.
These sausage stalls are manned by local organizations like charities, sports clubs, and schools, who hold them to collect funds and unite people as they cast their votes. And this year, the tradition stretched far beyond Australia, surfacing at polling stations all over the world, including New York, Tokyo, Riyadh, and even Antarctica.
The practice got a digital push in 2013, when a group of friends created democracysausage.org, a nonpartisan site that maps polling booths with food options. “We’ll usually rope in a few friends to keep an eye on incoming submissions,” said Alex Dawson, one of the site’s founders.
The website not only monitors sausages—but also marks stalls selling gluten-free, vegan, or halal options, and even ones selling cakes or coffee. During the 2022 elections, more than 2,200 stalls were recorded, raising a total of around AU$4.1 million for community causes.
From Cakes to Sausages
No one knows who originally came up with the term ‘democracy sausage’, but food at polling stations has a history that stretches almost a century.
Judith Brett, political commentator and author of From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting, says that fundraising sweets have been a staple at polling stations for decades. A 1928 image from Atherton Courthouse in Queensland, for example, captures women selling cakes and beverages outside a polling booth.
The advent of compulsory voting in 1924 made election day a national day, with families, sometimes accompanied by pets, coming out en masse. By the 1980s, gas barbecues in aluminium cases made sausages the popular snack, overtaking the previous jams and cakes.
It’s something that unites everyone together,” Dawson stated. And for young Australians, it’s been a way of reviving enthusiasm for voting. “It has been a way, I think, of linking a younger generation, a social media generation, into the civic rituals of election day,” Brett added.
Australia Votes Amid Key Challenges
This year’s federal election on May 3 promises to be one of the most hotly contested in recent history. Voters are concerned about increasing living expenses, housing conditions, global warming, and foreign policy tensions related to China and the US.
All 150 House seats and 40 of the 76 Senate seats are at stake. A party needs at least 76 seats to gain a majority. The Labor party, currently in control, has 78, but redistricting puts them at risk of becoming a minority even if they lose just a small number of seats.
The Coalition presently has 57 seats and has to regain a minimum of 19, including a number of the ones they had lost to independents. The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) will resume counting the votes when the polls close, although with almost 18 million votes—comprising the postal and overseas votes, results may take days or even weeks to be finalized.
