A Sixth-Grader Created The Greatest "I Voted" Sticker I've Ever Seen

A student shares the artistic backstory behind North Carolina's greatest piece of democratic humblebrag swag.

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Folks, there is not a lot of innovation in the “I voted” sticker space. And yet, against all odds, we got this:

Computer, enhance:

Look, I’m no art critic, but that thing is transcendent. I wish I could find the joy that this boy on a unicorn has after voting at a convenient location on a day of his choosing.

Can this child actually vote? No! He’s obviously a kid who’s sporting a real Ryder from Paw Patrol haircut, after all. Then again, he’s ostensibly flying away from a polling place on the back of a whimsical animal, so we’re more in the realm of Salvador Dali than election observer here. Honestly, if you show up at the polls on a unicorn, you shouldn’t have to show ID and your vote should count twice.

So who created this sticker? A sixth-grader, that’s who.

Shannon Fisher showing her winning design for Wake County’s early voting stickers. (Courtesy: Wake County Board of Elections)

Shannon Fisher is a sixth grader who recently transferred from Neuse River Middle School in Raleigh to Thales Academy in Knightdale. Last summer, she won a Board of Elections contest to design Wake County’s new early voting stickers. She got 28% of nearly 7,000 votes.

“I wanted to make it fun, and I just like unicorns,” she told me. “And my brother’s sitting on the unicorn.”

“Was he psyched that he made it into the drawing?” I asked.

“Well, he’s two.”

Shannon’s mom, Ashley Millhiser, saw the contest online, and encouraged her daughter to go for it. So Shannon spent a few days thinking of ideas. She wanted to mention voting. A lot. She decided to put a red, white, and blue trail behind the unicorn. Then, she sat down drew the picture in less than an hour, scanned it (“It was very small,” Ashley said), and waited.

Shannon’s design made it into the top ten, but she didn’t like her odds. Many of the others seemed more professional—created on a computer instead of by hand. “The digital art ones are like super neat,” she said. “So, I was hoping, but I didn’t necessarily think I was going to win.” Initially, Shannon’s biggest competition seemed to be from Thomas Bradley, a 10th grader at Grace Christian School who drew a common outdoor rodent with the text “I voted Squiearly.” Early on, that design drew the most votes.

Then, one day last summer, Ashley texted Shannon after school. “You won,” she wrote.

Shannon, her 2-year-old brother Arthur, and her mom and dad all got a tour of the Board of Elections. They gave her some merch, and a certificate that’s now framed and hanging on her bedroom wall. She was on the news. A few people at school asked her about it. “They’re like, oh, aren’t you the girl that did that sticker?” Shannon said. “And I was like, yeah, that’s me.”

Then, things largely died down, until now. I mean, members of Congress are tweeting it out:

Folks, we may be at the beginning of a student-drawn voting sticker Renaissance, one that began in 2022 when a 14-year-old won a contest in Ulster County, New York. His winning design? A freakish multi-colored human head on top of spider legs. That design got 228,000 votes online, and led to TWO ACTUAL TATTOOS. “That's the reason why we liked it so much, because we sometimes feel like that sticker when we're doing elections,” said an Ulster County elections commissioner.

After that, the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission put out guidance for other local Boards of Election that wanted to hold similar contests. The idea is to get people excited about voting again in a way that inspires more civic pride than political weariness. “I Voted” stickers have been around since the 1980s, and while there’s no evidence that they increase turnout, they can make you feel like you’ve done your duty to your community. Plus, it’s now a chance for some students to really let ‘er rip.

As for Shannon, a few people have texted her mom to say they’re seeing the stickers in the wild. Shannon’s elementary school art teacher asked for an autograph. “You’re gonna be famous some day,” she told Shannon. Her mom thinks she’s got talent. “She’s very good at art,” Ashley said. “Her room is plastered with drawings she’s done. She drew some owls for her grandparents, and she drew a landscape the other day of the mountains.”

I asked if Shannon could turn in the sticker to her current art teacher for extra credit. “She doesn’t know yet,” Shannon said.

It’s hard to say exactly why Shannon’s design won. “A lot of people tried to do North Carolina or voting-related things,” Ashley said, “and Shannon’s like, I just wanna do stuff I like.” In a world where it’s easier than ever to generate something slick and marketable, things with a human touch can still stand out, even if they’re simple. “I guess I just like unicorns,” Shannon said, “and I also like my brother.”