Democracy sausage? Now some booths want a pizza the action

Sausage. White bread. Sauce. Maybe onion. It's a simple recipe stamped on the collective consciousness of Australia, but this federal election many polling booths are taking the democracy sausage to new levels.

Fancy butcher sausages are big polling booth business across Melbourne, and voters can tuck into snags from Glenferrie Gourmet Meats at Auburn Primary School in Hawthorn East, or democracy kransky at Bell Primary in Preston.

In a year where vegan products have been as common as Clive Palmer billboards, public schools such as Moreland Primary, Brunswick North and Yarraville West are providing plant-based snags to raise money for items such as smart boards, art supplies and playground equipment.

Reservoir West Primary is even offering "democracy pizza".

The school's "grub club" plans its food-based fundraising and recently had a wood-fired oven built on campus. "We thought we would get the oven going on election day so there's pizza to go with the sausages and cakes," said Cathie Avraam, Reservoir West parent and grub club member.

The "democracy pizzas" will be politically themed and include the "Shorten Crust" (a margherita described as "the union of old and new ingredients") and a "Green Leafy Alternative" vegetarian number. Funds raised will go towards resurfacing the school oval.

More than 1500 polling places across the country have registered their sizzle intentions with demoracysausage.org, a map-based website that uses Australian Electoral Commission data to identify polling places and invites fundraising stallholders to promote their sausage and cake offerings.

"Democracy sausages have definitely become fancier since we started the website in 2013," said Kimberley Seats, who co-runs the website out of Western Australia with five friends.

The Australian National Dictionary Centre's 2016 Word of the Year was "democracy sausage" (a term which reportedly came into circulation in 2012) and from there "things just snowballed" said Ms Seats.

Twitter created a sausage-on-bread icon for "AusPol" related posts at the last federal election, and the ritual was featured by the BBC on Monday in a field piece titled "How sausages get Australians out to vote".

"In the last few years there has also been a lot more social media use which has contributed to the popularity of democracy sausages," said Ms Seats.

"People are very big on posting a photo of their democracy sausage on Instagram, and the more fancy the sausage, the more social media 'likes' it receives."

Social media attention may draw more voters to the local school, church or community group the sausage was sourced, thus increasing the funds raised for that polling place's cause.

Seats and her team will be following the "democracysausage" hashtag across social media and updating the website in real time with information about which stalls have the fanciest bangers and if any have sold out.

"We've even had people contact us and say they plan on taking a democracy sausage tour of different offerings in their electorate," said Ms Seats. "For want of a better term, it's become a cultural phenomenon."