ITHACA, N.Y.—The Tompkins County Board of Elections has announced the winning design for the 2023 “I Voted” sticker contest, created by Dakota Tseng. The design—which features a cat in a field of flowers—will be found on 30,000 “I Voted” stickers for Tompkins County voters in the November 2023 general election.
Tseng recently graduated from New Roots Charter School and will be celebrated at a future Tompkins County Legislature meeting. The final eight designs came from students from local schools including New Roots Charter School, Lehman Alternative Community School, Ithaca High School and Dryden High School. The creators of the designs weren’t identified prior to the contest, other than being local students.
The overall contest received more than 2,100 votes, with Tseng’s design receiving 565 votes. The second (Option 3) and third (Option 5) place winners, designs featuring a banner stating “I Voted” and a pig with the same message, received 487 votes and 271 votes each. See the full results here.
The TCBOE launched the “I Voted” sticker contest to boost civic engagement among the county’s young members and to encourage voter turnout for local elections.
“As a recently graduated senior, I love to participate in democracy,” Tseng said according to Tompkins County. “I hope my sticker design will inspire others to engage as well!”
Both elections commissioners in Tompkins County, Alanna Congdon and Steve DeWitt, congratulated Tseng for winning the contest.
“Kudos to Dakota and all of the young people who submitted designs – they were fantastic and great expressions of our local artistic talent,” Congdon said in the announcement. “We had excellent turnout for this election—I wish we could say that about all elections! I hope that having a new and exciting sticker available only to voters in Tompkins County will encourage more people to show up to the polls this November.”
Julia Senzon is a reporter from The Cornell Daily Sun working on The Sun’s summer fellowship at The Ithaca Voice.