Plenty of the submissions in a statewide contest to design Michigan’s next “I Voted” sticker featured cherry blossoms or American flags fluttering in the wind.
Only one entry, however, depicted a werewolf clawing its shirt to tatters and howling at an unseen moon. A smattering of stars and stripes poke out from behind its brawny torso.
“I Voted,” reads a string of red, white and blue block letters floating above the creature’s open maw.
The illustration, which was created by Jane Hynous, a 12-year-old from Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., was revealed on Wednesday as one of nine winning designs that the Michigan Department of State will offer local clerks to distribute to voters in the November election.
The werewolf sticker received more than 20,000 votes in the public contest, beating every other entry by a margin of nearly 2,000 votes, said Cheri Hardmon, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of State. The design gained traction on social media among those who found it fitting for an intense, and at times bewildering, moment in national politics.
“If there is ever a year to have an unhinged werewolf ripping its shirt off as the “I Voted” sticker … it’s 2024,” Derek Dobies, the chief of staff of the Michigan A.F.L.-C.I.O., wrote on X.
Jane, who is in seventh grade, seemed unfazed by her victory when reached by phone after school on Wednesday. She drew the demiclad werewolf in about an hour using a pencil case’s worth of felt-tip pens.
“It kind of just came to me,” she said.
She had not initially been enthusiastic when her social studies teacher told students about the contest. But inspiration struck when another teacher put on a movie during class. She said she nailed the design on her first try.
“I didn’t want to do something that usually you think of when you think of Michigan,” she said. “I was like, ‘Why not make a wolf pulling his shirt off?’”
Amy Hynous, Jane’s mother, added, “It’s a strong symbol, and Jane’s very passionate about art.”
Jane submitted her design in a category for elementary and middle school students, but it received more votes than any entry in the categories for older students and adults. Other winning stickers featured a rainbow trout, a buck wearing sunglasses and a cat in an Uncle Sam hat. One employed some Midwest slang, with the text “Ope, I Voted” over a colorful background.
Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, said she was “overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and creativity from the people of our great state” in a news release announcing the winners.
The contest was suggested this spring by Michigan’s Collegiate Student Advisory Task Force, a group of 34 students who work with the Department of State to encourage civic engagement among young people.
Zena Aljilehawi, 23, the task force’s chair, said the group was inspired in part by the 2022 contest in Ulster County, N.Y., that yielded a viral urchinlike illustration by Hudson Rowan, 14. In a similar contest this year in Kentucky, a grinning humanoid lizard became a social media favorite, only to lose to a more traditional drawing of a horse.
“The margin, while close, is outside the recanvass threshold and Lizard Man has graciously conceded,” Kentucky’s secretary of state, Michael Adams, wrote on social media.
More than 480 designs were submitted to Michigan’s contest, which opened in May. The task force narrowed the pool to 25 options per age group that were put up to a public vote. The werewolf sticker stood out early in the process, Ms. Aljilehawi said.
“When we saw it, we were like, ‘We have a feeling this is going to be a hit,’” she said.
Several members of the task force thought the creature was the Michigan Dogman, a human-canine hybrid who figures in local legends, Ms. Aljilehawi added. That interpretation is not shared by Jane, the artist, who sees the muscular werewolf as a representation of the strength that each American can exercise by voting.
“It was just a random werewolf; it didn’t have anything to do with Michigan,” Jane said.
The Michigan Department of State ordered a total of one million stickers in the various winning designs, which will be free for the clerks at the city, township and county levels, Ms. Hardmon said. Clerks can also offer more standard “I Voted” stickers.
Christina Younes would much prefer the sticker designed by her 14-year-old daughter, Gabby Warner, which reads “I Voted yay” in simple red text. The letter E is scrawled backward, Gabby said, as a nod to her younger sisters who are still learning how to write.
Ms. Younes has heard that her precinct clerk in Rockford, Mich., has already ordered the winning stickers. Although she was “really surprised” her design was selected, Gabby said she looked forward to accompanying her mother to the polls in November.
“We can’t wait to see someone wearing it on Election Day,” she said.
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