Australia Votes Today

It's election day here in Australia and so we're all casting our votes. Because voting is compulsory it means all the adult population (those who haven't voted early as I did) are off to their local polling place along with their kids and sometimes their dogs.

As the majority of polling places are based at local primary schools the enterprising members of the P&C (fundraising associations of teachers and parents whose children go to the school) are out in force. At most schools there are cake stalls where you can buy a yummy home-made goody - or two and, of course, the obligatory sausage sizzle. This is, at its most basic, a sausage cooked on the spot on a barbecue (usually by one of the fathers or a male teacher) and topped with a slurp of tomato sauce served in a long, white, soft bun - but these days they are often much fancier. Pisces has just come back voting and brought with him a sausage sizzle bedecked with fried onion and mustard and I've heard there are places where a fried egg can be added. Gasp!

Things have stepped up a notch this year with someone coining the term Democracy sausage for these offerings and there are even websites - www.electionsausagesizzle.com.auhttp://www.electionsausagesizzle.com.au/ and www.democracysausage.org  are two - where you can go to find out which polling places have sausage sizzles - including what they offer - and where you can add details of your own sausage sizzle. Twitter is all twitterpated about it, too.

Democracy sausage has really caught on and Facebook is full of posts from people who instead of saying they have voted say they have their Democracy sausage and maybe be posting a photo of it.
All this might seem a frivolous approach to an election but in reality it's not. We have to vote, we do vote and we take it seriously but there's a long wait in the queues - Pisces was away for nearly an hour - and these things make the waiting less onerous - and, if you've had to drag the kids with you, it's a welcome distraction.

Voting closes at 6:00 PM local time this evening and because of time differences, the first of the eastern states votes are already being counted before polling closes here. Most times the result of the House of Representatives is known by mid evening although the Senate takes somewhat longer. Sometimes, though, it's close, too close to call before the last postal votes stragglers come in during the week following the election. Then things can get tense. Elections can be unpredictable so all we can do is wait and see.

wait and see