As we draw closer to the November general election, officials are considering ways to get the community more involved and excited about the election process. This summer, the Washington County Election Commission is, well, commissioning, a new design for their “I voted” sticker. Jennifer Price is the director of elections in Washington County, and she says they've always known how important the stickers were to voters, but it became crystal clear during the 2020 election cycle.
The transcript of this conversation has been edited for clarity.
Jennifer Price: And of course, we were dealing with COVID and the safety features that we put into place. And one of those was having every voter use a stylus. And we thought, okay, we're going to get the stylus. The stylus themselves said I voted on them. And we thought this will be a great way to keep our poll worker safe, to keep the voters safe, to make sure that we're not touching. You know, the voting equipment that we're using a brand new stylus for every voter that comes in. And it still will say I voted. So we deliberately chose not to send I voted stickers to the polling locations because that would be one more thing that poll workers would have to handle, hand to the voters or place in a surface for voters to touch.
Well, the feedback we got from that election — while everybody appreciated the stylus and that worked wonderfully — they missed the I voted stickers. And so of course we've gone back to using the I voted stickers. And this year we thought, how else can we engage, you know, the voters in Washington County and voters who will become eligible eventually to vote? And so, we opened up an I voted sticker contest to design what our sticker will look like for the general election this year.
Matthew Moore: Did it surprise you that there was that much feedback about the lack of stickers?
JP: Not really. We knew that even when we would do small elections, if we forgot to send out the I voted stickers, our poll supervisors would call us, and the voters liked the stickers. We thought by replacing the sticker with the stylus that said I voted, that that would maybe lessen that want for the I voted sticker. So, we knew they were popular, and have always done our best, but we really looked at the safety issue during 2020. Of course, now we're sending I voted stickers out to the polling locations. And this year, we hope to have a very unique I voted sticker that will be eligible for the presidential election.
MM: Absolutely. So talk a little bit about what are the requirements for the design of the sticker and who is eligible to design it.
JP: So it's going to be eligible for anyone who lives in Washington County, between the ages of six and 14. It needs to say I voted on it, that's the big parameter. Of course, it can't be political in nature in the sense that it, you know, promotes a candidate or campaign. But we want something unique, something patriotic, whatever someone comes up with, we're excited to see what we might get turned into us. And of course, the I voted is the most important thing.
MM: You've seen this work in other places. This certainly inspired you to implement this here in Washington County, right?
JP: Yeah, absolutely. We're always looking at how can we engage the public. How can we keep trust with the public? What can we do to make voting kind of fun and for people to look at and look forward to doing? So, we saw that other counties had been doing I voted sticker contests for several years. We kind of looked to see what they did, and so we implemented it this year.
MM: The competition is starting today, goes through August 6th. Working people find out more information about where to turn in their designs and all of that good stuff.
JP: They’ll be able to find it on our website. They can download the parental consent form. They can download the entry form. And then we will be at all the public libraries in Washington County. We'll have forms available and also a ballot box to be able to return it. It'll be at the County Courthouse and then, of course, at the Election Commission office.
The idea is that you can pick it up at the library, return it to the library, return it to our office. But we need those submissions by August the 6th. And then what we're going to do is we'll choose the top three designs. Those will then be open to the public to vote on. And we're going to kind of do that in a fun way, too. We plan on doing some online voting to make it easy for everyone in Washington County to vote. But we actually want to do an in-person voting as well.
MM: Oh, I love that.
JP: So we'll have that available. And that'll be open to everyone in Washington County. Not just registered voters, but we hope that some of the students who are turning in the I voted stickers will show up to actually vote. We'll do all of that and then we'll announce the winner August 28th.
MM: Awesome. Well, I'm excited, we’ll have to have you back and the end to talk about that.
JP: Sounds great.
You can find the official entry forms, including the parental consent portion at your public library in Washington County. Or you can come pick one up at KUAF. Jennifer left us with a stack if you want to come here and do that as well. You're welcome to do that. The deadline for entry is August 6th.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. The authoritative record of KUAF programming is the audio record.
