Election Sizzles - The 2016 Australian Word of the Year

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Every polling place, someone's serving sausages and serving them to people as they go into vote or come out. Families and charities gathering for sausage sizzles and fundraisers at voting booths across Australia. 15 electoral offices are crisscrossing the state covering thousands of kilometres with ballot papers in hand. We have 95% voting participation here. Australians will turn up in their bathing suits. Literally just a speedo or they'll be cleany. The queues aren't long. There only in there for 10 minutes or something and then they're out. It sounds really fun.

Midterm elections are a tough sell in the United States. Half of eligible voters show up in a good year. On Election Day, we’re revisiting an episode about how things work down under, where “sausage sizzles” and “bathers” make mandatory voting feel like a party.

This episode was originally produced by Noam Hassenfeld and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. It was updated by Amina Al-Sadi with help from Efim Shapiro and Matt Collette. New reporting by Amanda Lewellyn, Miles Bryan, Laura Bullard, and Hady Mawajdeh.

Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained

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