Tompkins County voters walk away from the polls casting more than just a ballot. Many have also voted for the next “I Voted” sticker designed by Ithaca’s rising generation of civic participants.
For the past three years, the Tompkins County Board of Elections has hosted a voting sticker contest, inviting submissions from Kindergarten through high school age students in Tompkins County to compete to design the next “I Voted” and “Future Voter” stickers.
This year’s competition drew nearly 1,300 votes. A total of 67 designs were submitted, of which 15 finalists' submissions were listed online for another round of voting.
Sevy Stiglitz won the “Future Voter” category with a hand-drawn design featuring a dog in a top hat and red bowtie, sitting before a hilly landscape with an American flag beside it.
A fourth-grade student at Belle Sherman Elementary School, Stiglitz enjoys the arts — including reading and music — and also loves spending time outdoors, playing sports and caring for animals, according to a press release from the Board of Elections
Olivia Casselberry, a seventh-grader at Boynton Middle School, won the “I Voted” design, which features a dog sitting in the grass, as it looks up. The sticker is subtly bordered with red and blue stripes. Casselberry enjoys the arts, especially theater, music and drawing.
The “I Voted” stickers will be distributed to general election voters in the November elections and the “Future Voter” stickers will be given to kids and young adults who are accompanying their families at the poles.
The goal of the competition is to increase civic engagement among Tompkins County youth.
“The Board of Elections is so proud to be able to encourage civic engagement in this way,” Republican Elections Commissioner Alanna Congdon said in a press release.
Democratic Elections Commissioner Steve DeWitt congratulated the winners, noting the benefits of raising awareness about elections.
“This year’s submissions were again very creative and patriotic,” Dewitt said in a press release from June. “It was hard to pick the finalists for the public to vote on.”
Cereese Qusba is a reporter at The Ithaca Voice and a news editor at The Cornell Daily Sun working on The Sun’s summer fellowship. This article was originally published in The Ithaca Voice.
Cereese Qusba is a member of the Class of 2027 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is a news editor for the 143rd Editorial Board and can be reached at cqusba@cornellsun.com.
