Call me a wonk, a nerd, a bore, but I love election day. The sense of anticipation around who will emerge victorious, the atmosphere on the polling booths, the new trend of doggy bandanas spruiking candidates and, of course, the quintessential election day sausage sizzle.
The democracy sausage is one of the joys of election day.Credit: Paul Jeffers
Yet I fear I am an outlier, based on early voting numbers ahead of Saturday’s election. By close of business on Tuesday, just over 4 million Australians had already cast their vote, almost 800,000 more than at the same point in the 2022 campaign. And all without a sausage touching a barbecue.
There is apathy towards politics, no doubt, and this election campaign has been far from inspiring. But is the democracy sausage being replaced by UberEats? Is convenience now more important than the time-honoured tradition of turning out en masse on a single day with our fellow Australians and exercising our democratic right?
Yes, there needs to be flexibility for those groups who need it but early voting has gone too far. Too many people are doing it for ease rather than out of necessity. Once there was the camaraderie of turning out on election day, buying a sausage to support your local school’s P&C and carrying out your civic duty. Now, rather than embracing the day, voters are schlepping to the 500 early polling centres across the country and casting their ballot early, often before final policies are even released.
Jim Reed, the director of Resolve Strategic which conducts exclusive surveys for this masthead, summed it up perfectly when I asked him for his thoughts on this rise in early voting.
Bill Shorten’s awkward munching helped make democracy sausage word of the year in 2016.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“The sausage sizzle has given way to Guzman y Gomez on UberEats the week before.”
Reed says there is nothing peculiar about this election. “Early voting has been rising at federal and state elections for some years,” says Reed, “so I don’t think it reflects a particular outcome. It’s more about convenience. During COVID we got used to the convenience of WFH, Deliveroo, telehealth, and voting early is convenient for a lot of people. It’ll likely rise again this time, but the blitzkrieg of votes last week was more about the [Easter and Anzac Day] holidays meaning more people at home with free time.”
Despite making it easier than ever for people to vote, turnout has been steadily decreasing since 2007 in Australia. For the first time since compulsory voting was introduced for the 1925 federal election, turnout fell below 90 per cent at the last general election.
