How the democracy sausage, a polling day snack, became Australia's election symbol

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Many Australians arriving at polling places on Saturday followed their civic duty by eating what’s become known as a democracy sausage, a cultural tradition as Aussie as koalas and Vegemite, and for some just as important as casting their vote.

The grilled sausage wrapped in a slice of white bread and often topped with onions and ketchup is a regular fixture of Antipodean public life. But when offered at polling places on election day, the humble treat is elevated to a democracy sausage — a national, if light-heated, symbol for electoral participation.

Or, as a website tracking real-time, crowd-sourced democracy sausage locations on polling day notes: “It’s practically part of the Australian Constitution.”

But the tradition is far from political. Cooking and selling the snacks outside polling places is the most lucrative fundraising event of the year for many school and community groups.

Democracy sausages are served everywhere Australians vote. Ahead of Saturday’s ballot, and on election day, they were due to appear at polling places for citizens abroad on nearly every continent — at Australian embassies in New York, Riyadh, Nairobi and Tokyo, and even at a research station in Antarctica.

The friends who run the apolitical and nonpartisan website democracysausage.org began the project in 2013, when they struggled to find information about which polling places would offer food on election day, spokesperson Alex Dawson told The Associated Press.

Now Dawson and his friends help voters choose their polling place with a site that has expanded to catalogue details of gluten free, vegan and halal democracy sausage options, and the availability of other treats such as cake and coffee. It makes for a hectic election day.

“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 volunteers take a lunchtime break to cast their own votes, and, naturally, enjoy a democracy sausage.

At the 2022 election, the website registered 2,200 of Australia’s 7,000 polling places as serving democracy sausages or other snacks and Dawson expected at least that number would participate on Saturday. Groups running the stalls made $4.1 million Australian dollars ($2.6 million) in profits in 2022, he said.

No one’s sure who coined the term democracy sausage. But fundraising snacks have been served at Australia’s voting booths for close to a century, said Judith Brett, a professor of politics at Melbourne’s LaTrobe University and author of the book “From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting.”

What began with polling place bake sales in the 1920s became election day sausage sizzles in the 1980s with the invention of the portable barbeque grill. The democracy sausage’s success is partly because of how Australia votes.

Elections always occur on Saturdays and are family affairs — voters arrive with their children and dogs. And turning up to vote is required by law, resulting in turnouts higher than 90% and ensuring a captive market for democracy sausage sales.

Brett attributed the sausage’s appeal to the Australian sense of humor — “It was a bit of a joke,” she said — and its grassroots origins.

“Government didn’t think it up, a political party didn’t think it up as a slogan,” she added.

“It’s something that binds everyone together,” Dawson said. In 2016, the Australian National Dictionary Centre named “democracy sausage” as its word of the year.

The sausage has also proved a political cipher, a way for aspiring leaders to show they’re humble enough to consume a cheap piece of meat wrapped in bread, at times with mixed results. Photographs of politicians eating democracy sausages in bizarre and ungainly ways have become memes or episodes of Australian political folklore.

“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.

Some commentators suggest that early voting could spell the end for the democracy sausage. More than 4 million Australians went to the polls before election day, a new record. But Dawson said he wasn’t worried, because those who voted early could still drop by a polling place on Saturday to buy a snack.

“We’ve heard reports of people who are tourists over here, foreign students, that will go along to election days just to get the sausages,” he added. “I think that’s a great piece of Australian culture for people to take home with them.”

A volunteer cooks sausages on a BBQ outside a polling booth at Sydney's Bondi Beach, Saturday, May 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

A volunteer prepares to cook sausages on a BBQ outside a polling booth at Sydney's Bondi Beach, Saturday, May 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

A volunteer cooks sausages on a BBQ outside a polling booth at Sydney's Bondi Beach, Saturday, May 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

A customer pours mustard over a sausage in a bread roll outside a polling booth at Sydney's Bondi Beach, Saturday, May 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

A volunteer hands a customer a sausage in a bread roll outside a polling booth at Sydney's Bondi Beach, Saturday, May 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

A worker prepares a "Democracy Sausage" at the Marrickville Public School in Sydney, Australia, Saturday, May 3, 2025, for someone who has voting in the general election. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

A worker hands a man a "Democracy Sausage" at the Marrickville Public School in Sydney, Australia, Saturday, May 3, 2025, after voting in the general election. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

People get their "Democracy Sausage" at the Marrickville Public School in Sydney, Australia, Saturday, May 3, 2025, after voting in the general election. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

A man squirts sauce on his "Democracy Sausage" at the Marrickville Public School in Sydney, Australia, Saturday, May 3, 2025, after voting in the general election. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown on protesters, a move coming as activists said Monday the death toll in the nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 544.

Iran had no immediate reaction to the news, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — traveled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defense.

Meanwhile Monday, Iran called for pro-government demonstrators to head to the streets in support of the theocracy, a show of force after days of protests directly challenging the rule of 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian state television aired chants from the crowd, who shouted “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”

Trump and his national security team have been weighing a range of potential responses against Iran including cyberattacks and direct strikes by the U.S. or Israel, according to two people familiar with internal White House discussions who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“The military is looking at it, and we’re looking at some very strong options,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday night. Asked about Iran’s threats of retaliation, he said: “If they do that, we will hit them at levels that they’ve never been hit before.”

Trump said that his administration was in talks to set up a meeting with Tehran, but cautioned that he may have to act first as reports of the death toll in Iran mount and the government continues to arrest protesters.

“I think they’re tired of being beat up by the United States,” Trump said. “Iran wants to negotiate.”

He added: “The meeting is being set up, but we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting. But a meeting is being set up. Iran called, they want to negotiate.”

Iran through country's parliamentary speaker warned Sunday that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America uses force to protect demonstrators.

More than 10,600 people also have been detained over the two weeks of protests, said the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous unrest in recent years and gave the death toll. It relies on supporters in Iran crosschecking information. It said 496 of the dead were protesters and 48 were with security forces.

With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the toll. Iran’s government has not offered overall casualty figures.

Those abroad fear the information blackout is emboldening hard-liners within Iran’s security services to launch a bloody crackdown. Protesters flooded the streets in the country’s capital and its second-largest city on Saturday night into Sunday morning. Online videos purported to show more demonstrations Sunday night into Monday, with a Tehran official acknowledging them in state media.

In Tehran, a witness told the AP that the streets of the capital empty at the sunset call to prayers each night. By the Isha, or nighttime prayer, the streets are deserted.

Part of that stems from the fear of getting caught in the crackdown. Police sent the public a text message that warned: “Given the presence of terrorist groups and armed individuals in some gatherings last night and their plans to cause death, and the firm decision to not tolerate any appeasement and to deal decisively with the rioters, families are strongly advised to take care of their youth and teenagers.”

Another text, which claimed to come from the intelligence arm of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, also directly warned people not to take part in demonstrations.

“Dear parents, in view of the enemy’s plan to increase the level of naked violence and the decision to kill people, ... refrain from being on the streets and gathering in places involved in violence, and inform your children about the consequences of cooperating with terrorist mercenaries, which is an example of treason against the country,” the text warned.

The witness spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing crackdown.

The demonstrations began Dec. 28 over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, which trades at over 1.4 million to $1, as the country’s economy is squeezed by international sanctions in part levied over its nuclear program. The protests intensified and grew into calls directly challenging Iran’s theocracy.

Nikhinson reported from aboard Air Force One.

In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran's Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, January. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)

In this frame grab from footage circulating on social media from Iran shows protesters taking to the streets despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026.(UGC via AP)

In this frame grab from footage circulating on social media from Iran showed protesters once again taking to the streets of Tehran despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world in Tehran, Iran, Saturday Jan. 10, 2026. (UGC via AP)