"So once you have cast your vote, you will be able to get a traditional sausage sandwich and/or a can of drink for a euro coin contribution," its website says. sausage sizzle A scour of major Australian embassies finds The Netherlands is leading the democratic pack on sausages for election day. Grant Castner, founder of SnagVotes, a website dedicated to finding a sausage on election day, believes it is a first for an international polling place. Four people on his site say they will be voting at The Hague. Mr Castner says the distinctly Australia love of a sausage on election day can be explained.

"Most polling places are at schools or churches and they take advantage of the fundraising opportunity," Mr Castner said. Sausage sizzle Credit:na "Also the fact that we have our elections on a Saturday. In the US, the federal election is on a Tuesday, people get in and get out, but we have time to grab a sausage and a cake if they are lucky," he said. In Britain too, elections are traditionally held on Thursdays. Mr Castner, who works in Brisbane, has run his free website since 2010, when he and friends wanted to vote at a polling station with a sausage sizzle stall. He is not alone, there is also a Facebook group dedicated to the pursuit of sausage in bread.

With pre-polling on the rise and volunteers potentially scarce during the school holiday election, Mr Castner had wondered whether the sausage sizzle might be getting the chop. Lois Beggs runs the sausage sizzle at the polling booth at the Brunswick South West Primary School. Credit:Robert Banks But the sausage sizzle is safe in the culture of Australian democracy. There are already 423 sausage sizzle stalls registered on his website. Two weeks out from the last election, in 2013, just 367 were registered. Mr Castner says some of the rise may be down to polling places becoming aware of his free website advertising. "And unlike the NBN rollout, SnagVotes already covers all of Australia," he said. The humble sausage sizzle is seemingly not enough though. Of the website registered polling places, 69 per cent said they would offer a sausage sizzle and cake stall. Just 27 per cent would only offer a sausage sizzle stall and four per cent would offer only a cake stall.