Why I hate ‘I Voted’ stickers

As I walked out of my polling place in the basement of St. Anthony's church in Soho this morning, I encountered one of the most horrific things I've seen during my decade in the neighborhood.

I thought about calling the authorities, but I couldn't really figure out which government agency would be obligated to respond. In the end I shook my head, walked away, and said a quiet prayer.

There on Sullivan Street stood a grown man in a mafioso tracksuit (possibly of the Sergio Tacchini variety) trying to balance his tiny white lap dog and his iPhone to get the perfect shot — a selfie of him and Fluffy with their "I Voted" stickers prominently displayed.

I can only imagine what happened next. The dutiful citizen would upload the image to Instagram with a caption challenging all of his followers to go out and make a difference. "Hey if Fluffy can vote, so can you. Lol." The "patriotic" snap most likely followed a picture from his last sweaty session taken in front of his gym mirror or Sunday's organic farm-to-table supper.

The sad visual was a reminder of how narcissism and the need for validation have hijacked Election Day, turning an important civic duty into an opportunity to collect "likes" on Instagram or Facebook.

Or as Chris Rock famously railed during a stand-up routine (in rather unsavory language), people are always taking credit for things you're simply supposed to do.

"I take care of my kids. You're supposed to … What are you bragging about?" he ranted.

In short, you're supposed to vote.

The red, white and blue adhesives date back to the mid-'80s when most households had rotary phones, and an iPhone was barely a twinkle in George Jetson's eye. Though I don't remember ever noticing them until the last few elections, when it became cool and quite simple to splash it across every social media outlet.

I guess I'm not mad at the stickers, per se, but it's what they've come to represent — a smug self-congratulatory ethos.

Today, plug the term "I voted stickers" into Twitter, and you get a endless scroll of selfies, complaints that polling places ran through their supply by 9 a.m., well-placed stickers to show off ample cleavage, or, even worse, galleries of celebrities wearing their lever-pulling badge on their sleeves.

The last time I wore a sticker to show I had done something important, it was a red round number bragging that I had been to the dentist, gotten a fluoride treatment, and had no cavities.
And I was 8.

Perhaps my parents were overly private, but I was brought up to think of voting as a duty — one that didn't warrant a standing ovation. I remember being a little kid and on numerous occasions asking my father about his trip to the polls. His response to that and basically every other question I asked him was, "Yes, I voted, but the rest is none of your business."

(However, the Reagan paraphernalia in our house gave it away.)

And while people should be excited to vote and share in this great American process, remember the reward is supposed to be a better functioning government — not getting a virtual thumbs up from the dude you used to bum cigarettes off of during high school study hall.

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