What’s Behind the Sticker?
We all know the “I Voted” sticker is a marker that you voted. You put it on your shirt, carry it in your bag, put it on your laptop, or take a selfie with it. Either way, you earned this accessory and it isn’t going out of style. It has an interesting history, though…
- The earliest sightings of the “I Voted” sticker point to 1982, where an article in the Miami Herald mentioned how small businesses in Fort Lauderdale were offering discounts to people wearing the stickers.
- A few years later, The Phoenix Realtors Association started distributing stickers in Phoenix and Maricopa County.
- In 1986, an election supply company named National Campaign Supply claims they started selling the stickers.
- And then, in 1987, the most recognizable version we see today of a flag billowing in the wind, was copyrighted by Janet Boudreau, who created the design while working for another election-supply company, Intab.
These little things were a hot item, and quickly becoming a social cue of who did the democratic deed, and who didn’t.
Money Money Money
In 2012, MIC estimated that if the government were to provide every eligible voter with a sticker for 15 cents, it would cost them over $34 million each election. However, in 2020 the podcast Marketplace noted the cost could be as cheap as one cent!
At the end of the day though, money is irrelevant when it comes to acquiring the coveted sticker. You can get them for free at your local polling location, New York Magazine hands them out on their covers… Krispy Kreme even hands them out with a free donut to boot! One can also download a digital “I Voted By Mail” sticker, for the influencer in (or next to) you.
No, what makes them so meaningful is what you have to do to get them. And that is… vote.
#IVOTED from Arena Stage
This year, we’re proud to introduce our #IVOTED initiative. Any time between November 8 and 13 you can get a 25% discount to Sanctuary City by showing you voted in the 2022 mid-term elections:
💻 Online, enter the promo code IVOTED and when you arrive to pick up your tickets, show your “I Voted” sticker at the Box Office
🎟️ In person, you can walk right up to the Box Office and present your sticker and get your 25% off
☎️ Over the phone, mention our IVOTED initiative, receive your discount, and when you arrive to pick up your tickets, show your sticker at the Box Office
Why Sanctuary City
But why Sanctuary City? Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok’s poignant, funny, heartbreaking story introduces us to “B” and “G,” two young DREAMers who fight to stay in America, the only country they know as” home.”
"If you bumped into B or G while going about your everyday life, they’d tell you that they would do anything for the right to vote."
We get a glimpse into how much they, like many other immigrants, are willing to risk when they have everything to lose; the obstacles and injustices they have to overcome just to get a taste of the privileges natural-born Americans think nothing of every day. Chances are, if you bumped into B or G while going about your everyday life, they’d tell you that they would do anything for the right to vote.
Voting is more than a sticker, it’s a symbol of the choice you get to make when you participate in democracy. Those choices affect real people, and those choices are laid bare in Sanctuary City.
If you can, please, vote. And we’d love to have you join us at Sanctuary City after. Because together, we can change the world.
