The Aussie democracy sausage
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No matter how you vote today, there's one thing we can all agree on: voting should involve eating snacks. And in Australia, it does.
Flashback: In 2022, Australia held federal elections to elect members of the Australian Parliament, including the Prime Minister. Living in SF, I went to the Australian Consulate on Market Street to cast my ballot.
The intrigue: It's Australian tradition that on Election Saturday local polling places at schools, scout halls and churches will hold a "sausage sizzle" (read: barbecue) to sell "democracy sausages."
It's nothing fancy: Just a sanger with a beef snag and a bit of dead horse.
- That's a sandwich of plain white bread with beef sausage and ketchup.
- The democracy sausage tradition goes back decades — there's a national map of which polling places have them and politicians usually work the barbecues on election day for photo ops.
The bottom line: Even though I was voting 7,500 miles from home, I still got my democracy sausage, thanks to volunteers from the Golden Gate Australian Football League club who were selling them outside the consulate.
How did it taste? Like democracy, my friends. Like democracy.