Can creative stickers help get voters to the polls? What if they featured a spider-like creature or a werewolf ripping its shirt off? Election officials across the United States are hoping so.
Traditional red, white and blue “I Voted” stickers are being replaced by designs that range from tradition-oriented to totally offbeat. Some states commission artists to come up with new stickers, while others open it up to competitions. But they all cultivate regional pride.
Sarah Copeland Hanzas, the secretary of state for Vermont, said hosting a sticker design competition helped voters feel included.
“It just became clear over the years that so many people either don’t know how the system works, so they don’t want to engage and they just see that as something that other people do, or they feel disenfranchised,” she said. “We wanted to make it a focus of ours to break through that, and in particular, breaking through that with young people.”
Test your knowledge of stickers across the country.
Many of these stickers feature scenes, landmarks and animals for which the place is known.
Another common approach is to use the state’s outline in its sticker design.
To preserve some of the challenge, we’ll hide these shapes and offer clues within the questions.
Some sticker designs don’t rock the boat.
If not for their text, it might be hard to tell these creative designs have anything to do with the voting process.
