I Voted Sticker Design Board Deadlocked 3-3 on Glitter Question, Nation Holds Breath (Locally)

MAPLE COUNTY — The I Voted Sticker Design Board has adjourned its fourth consecutive meeting without selecting this year’s sticker, deadlocked 3-3 on what members are calling the glitter question — whether the 2026 sticker should feature what proponents call celebratory sparkle and opponents call a civic menace.

The pro-glitter faction, led by board member Tanya Rios, argues that glitter stickers photograph better for social media, which she says is the entire point of the sticker. People do not wear the sticker for themselves, Rios said. They wear it to be seen wearing it. Glitter is visibility. Glitter is democracy you can see from across the farmers market.

The anti-glitter bloc, headed by retired engineer Hal Drummond, presented a 12-slide deck on glitter migration — the tendency of glitter particles to detach and colonize wallets, dashboards, and laundry for months. He produced as Exhibit A his own wallet, which still sparkles from the 2019 commemorative sticker. It has been seven years, Drummond said quietly. Seven years.

The board did agree on several elements: the sticker will be the standard two-inch circle, the text will read I VOTED in 14-point bold, and the background will feature the county courthouse, which the board’s artist rendered in what the minutes describe as stately watercolor. The artist, a high school junior, was paid in community service hours and one marching band tuba performance.

Alternate proposals considered and rejected: a scratch-and-sniff sticker (smell options divided the board further), a holographic sticker (deemed too Las Vegas by a 4-2 vote), and a sticker shaped like the county itself, which one member noted looks unfortunately like a sneaker.

Public comment has been vigorous. The county received 312 emails, including one from a kindergarten class that voted unanimously for glitter by a show of sticky hands, and one from a local vacuum repair shop that endorsed the matte option for what it called obvious professional reasons.

Board chair Miriam Salk has scheduled a fifth meeting and, in a break with tradition, ordered pizza, which observers interpret as a sign that the deadlock must end. County ordinance requires the sticker order placed by September 1st, a deadline Salk calls real and the glitter faction calls a construct.

If no decision is reached, the county will default to last year’s matte design, an outcome Drummond calls acceptable and Rios calls a tragedy in adhesive form. The kindergarten class has been notified to stand by.