The Surprising Genius Of The "I Voted" Sticker

The little stickers that say “I Voted” started showing up in the ‘80s, and hung around for years. But now, many voting boards have cut back on their use, citing expense. They should have asked the blood banks about those little rewards before they made that decision. Recent research show that it’s an expense well worth it.

It’s a question that four researchers at Berkeley, Harvard, and the University of Chicago set out to study a few years ago. And their findings, published in a paper called Voting To Tell Others and featured this fall in The Review of Economic Studies and Berkeley News, reveal some startling truths about participating in democracy. While we might like to think of it as a noble pursuit, voting is deeply tied to more base human feelings and motivations, like social standing—basically, wanting to show off how good we are—along with dishonesty and shame.
It all boils down to this: Many of us vote so that we can tell everyone else we voted. And we don’t want to have to lie about it if we didn't.

What’s more, that little sticker lets us brag without having to say anything. The experiment they did didn’t involve the actual stickers, but the knowledge of the subjects’ voting behavior. Read about it at FastCo Design.