Creative 'I Voted' stickers branch out beyond the familiar flag design

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Whether scenic or slightly sinister — angry werewolf, anyone? — the designs on the front of “I Voted” stickers are attracting a lot of attention this year. But have you ever considered the back of your Election Day souvenir?

“Garment-safe adhesive, it’s incredibly important,” said Janet Boudreau, one sticker designer. “You can ruin leather, silk, fine wool if you don’t use garment-safe adhesive on any sticker that goes on fabric.”

Boudreau should know. She designed the iconic sticker that has been a polling place staple for decades: a simple ellipse featuring a rippling red, white and blue American flag. And while the company she once owned now has competition, she is delighted by the new versions cropping up around the country, many of them designed by children.

“I am all for it,” she said. “And I’m all for younger people getting involved and understanding the power of voting and having faith in it.”

Two years ago, a New York county’s stickers featuring a wild-eyed crab-like creature created by a 14-year-old boy became an online sensation. This year the smash hit — one of nine designs distributed in Michigan — depicts a werewolf shredding its shirt in front of an American flag.

The 12-year-old Michigan designer declined an interview request, but other young artists described rewarding experiences.

In Milton, New Hampshire, 10-year-old Grace was treated like a celebrity when she visited the polls for the presidential primary in January and town elections in March.

“I definitely did see a difference in everyone’s attitude, like everyone seemed happier and more excited to vote because they’d get a cool sticker that I designed,” she said. “And I really think it was cool that I made an impact on the way people vote and how they feel about voting.”

New Hampshire’s contest was open to fourth graders and more than 1,000 submitted entries. Grace, whose design features the state’s fallen but not forgotten Old Man of the Mountain rock formation, not only got to attend a pizza party at the Statehouse but has since become pen pals with one of the other two winners.

While Grace settled on her design quickly, 11-year-old Rilynn drafted three versions and had her family vote on their favorite. The winner? A moose standing on a ledge overlooking colorful fall foliage and the state’s highest mountain.

Like Grace, she was excited to see her stickers in action earlier this year.

“They had a huge pile of stickers and people were literally picking out my sticker,” she said. “By the time my dad got there, he didn’t get one.”

Not all of the new stickers are designed by children.

In Denver, incarcerated individuals designed two stickers, one featuring the Colorado flag with a brick building, sun and purple mountains comprising the “D” in “voted.” The design competition was aimed at promoting civic engagement and fostering a sense of purpose and community.

In King County, Washington, a graphic designer developed a sticker showcasing the Seattle cityscape on the top and the countryside on the bottom. And a contest open to adults and college students in San Francisco was won by illustrator Hollis Callas, who included flowers, birds, a seal, the Golden Gate Bridge and “I voted” in multiple languages.

“I love it,” said Allison Tichenor, who picked up a sticker when she voted earlier this week. “It’s beautiful, just like the city.”

Tichenor and others said they enjoy wearing the stickers to remind others to cast their ballots.

“I think they are important because you never know who it might inspire to vote,” said Deanna Long of Raleigh, North Carolina, who went to a Kamala Harris rally Wednesday with a voting sticker on her bag depicting a child riding a purple-maned unicorn.

“The designs have been fun and are from young kids, who have to rely on others to vote for their needs,” Long said. “The value of voting is hopefully becoming clearer to the younger generations, and I hope the artwork is inspiring to them as well.”

In 2019, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission launched a national contest for the best sticker as part of its efforts to honor innovative best practices in election administration. The latest batch of winners includes the Sante Fe County Clerk’s Office in New Mexico, where the contest focused specifically on “Future Voter” and “First Time Voter” stickers.

“Running elections is hard, and those ‘I voted’ sticker contests are both a nice way to potentially engage the community, but also some creativity and some fun,” said Benjamin Hovland, chairman of the nonpartisan federal commission.

Jason Wickersty certainly showed creativity with the sticker he fashioned out of pork roll, a type of processed meat favored in New Jersey known as Taylor ham. He shared a photo on the social platform X in 2020 of the meat stuck to his shirt and explained himself in an email this week.

“We Jersey people are fiercely proud and loyal to our state, and since they haven’t yet made official ‘I Voted’ slices of pork roll, I took an x-acto knife to a slice and carved my own quintessentially Jersey ‘I Voted’ badge,” he said.

Though a writer once called her a “veritable Betsy Ross” of “I Voted” stickers, Boudreau wasn’t the first to produce them. But she did come to dominate the market. By 2000, some 13 years after she sketched out the design at her kitchen table, her election supply company was selling more than 100 million stickers every two years before she sold the company in 2015. Officials there did not respond to an email seeking current sales figures.

The stickers started as a way to diversify the company’s offerings and attract new business, said Boudreau, who remembers her 6-year-old son affixing the colorful stickers to the black-and-white ads she mailed to potential clients.

“But this just made people happy,” she said. “It opened doors for us, and it made the voters happy.”

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Associated Press journalists Haven Daley in San Francisco, Hallie Golden in Seattle, Isabella Volmert in Lansing, Michigan, and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed.