The number of Australians casting their votes on election day is dwindling, sparking fears that the tradition of the “democracy sausage” could one day burn out.

It comes as more than 1.2 million voters cast their ballot using early or postal voting before Queensland’s state election on Saturday.

That sparked a warning that the iconic sausage could eventually become extinct, but the founder of a website that tracks every election day snag says there are still plenty of community groups slinging sausages in bread.

Alex Dawson, from the Democracy Sausage Project, told The New Daily while there has been a drop in voters on election day, there are still plenty of locations for a “democracy sausage”.

“We’ve got 230 registered locations compared to the last Queensland election where there was around 271,” he said.

“In the ACT, who have similar pre-polling numbers to Queensland, you didn’t need our website because every single polling place was running a sausage sizzle.”

Voting statistics

At the 2022 federal election, more than 5.5 million voters, or 35.82 per cent, voted in person at early voting centres, while over 2.2 million, or 14.30 per cent, voted by post.

Some 90 per cent of Australians voted in person on election day in 2010, compared to less than 50 per cent in 2022.

Queensland Premier Steven Miles said, in what could be his final pitch to voters, that every polling booth will have sausages in bread if he is re-elected.

“An important reform to democracy that I would like to see would be democracy sausages at pre-poll,” he said.

“I commit to Queenslanders to work as hard as I can to ensure that there are sausages at pre-polls.”

Origin of the tradition

Although refreshments and food have been sold for fundraising at polling booths for at least a century, the iconic sausage in bread first became a staple in the 1980s with the advent of the gas-powered stove.

That’s according to Judith Brett, the author of From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia got Compulsory Voting.

She said that the term was coined in 2012 and has taken off as a symbol of “Australians’ pride in their democratic tradition”.

“The democracy sausage is a recent symbol, created by the social media generation,” Brett said.

“The democracy sausage tells us that despite the many reasons to be cynical and frustrated by our politics there is also much to celebrate.”

Early and postal voting, however, has significantly cut into the number of people who are voting in person on election day, ultimately threatening to decrease the number of locations where a person can treat themselves to the humble sausage in bread.

Despite this, Dawson said that more than one million people visited the site before the May 2022 federal election.

“Even with 30 per cent fewer people going on election day, you still have thousands and thousands of people going through urban voting centres,” he said.

“It’s something that makes voting more than just a day to go and tick a box. It’s supporting your community groups and marking an occasion for the community to get together.”

Compulsory voting

Another reason for the popularity of the democracy sausage is the uniqueness of Australia’s electoral system.

Voters having a snag in bread after casting their vote on election day is now a democratic tradition in Australia. Photo: Getty

Brett said that only 18 other countries worldwide compel voters to cast a ballot.

“None of the countries in the mainstream of Australia’s political development have compulsory voting, not the United Kingdom from which Australia drew its parliamentary institutions and traditions, nor the United States, Canada, New Zealand or Ireland,” she said.

“To them, it seems an affront to democracy. We embrace it, with most opinion polls putting support in the 70 per cent range.”

She said compulsory voting and registration also foster political engagement, and the democracy sausage is “a popular, bottom-up creation, invented and spread by groups of friends, and cooked and eaten in their hundreds of thousands on election day.”

“For election day May 18, 2019 more than 2000 stalls registered for the Democracy Sausage website and #Democracy Sausage was tweeted 2.2 million times,” Brett said.

“It is a symbol that is only possible because of Australia’s distinctive electoral practices.”

-with AAP