Jane Hynous was bored watching “National Treasure” in her social studies class, so she pulled out a few markers and drew the first quirky image that entered her mind: a werewolf.
That June morning, the 12-year-old had learned that her state of Michigan was holding a competition for the best custom election stickers. Jane drew the werewolf ripping off its blue shirt while howling, with the words “I VOTED” in the background above an American flag.
When the middle school student returned to her home that afternoon in Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., she took a picture of her drawing and submitted it online, not expecting much to come of it.
But in the past week, Jane’s drawing has gone viral on social media and appeared on national TV programs since the Michigan Department of State announced that it was one of nine winners. The image might serve as a reflection of voters’ anxiety about two months before the election, but Jane said her drawing had little to do with politics.
“I just wanted to do something that was going to be, I guess, funny and not so serious,” Jane, a seventh-grader, told The Washington Post. “Because, you know, voting is such a serious topic, and you want to have something fun that’s going to lighten it up.”
Jane started doodling on her parents’ iPad as a 4-year-old and has since gone on to make beaded bracelets, origami art and dioramas in shoe boxes.
Still, when Jane’s teacher distributed templates and instructions for the sticker contest in June, Jane wasn’t sure whether she would enter. She said she didn’t think anything she created would stand out. But she didn’t want to watch “National Treasure,” so she drew with the markers and pens from her pencil case.
Jane figured other contestants would draw designs related to Michigan — lighthouses, trout and white-tailed deer — but she wanted to create something unique. She said she drew her werewolf in less than an hour.
Michigan residents submitted more than 480 designs between May and June, according to the Michigan Department of State.
Competitions in other states inspired Michigan’s contest, Zena Aljilehawi, the chair of a college student-led task force that helped organize the competition, told The Post. A third-grader in Kentucky this year drew a humanoid lizard, and in New York in 2022, a 14-year-old drew a multicolored, discombobulated human head on top of six turquoise legs.
Aljilehawi, 23, hoped Michigan’s contest would receive similar quirky designs. The competition’s template listed a few rules and tips: The design must say “I Voted,” be nonpartisan, avoid artificial intelligence, and participants should “be creative and HAVE FUN!”
Unbeknownst to Jane, Aljilehawi said she and the 33 other members of her task force had a feeling the sticker would win when they first saw it.
“Our group chat went crazy,” said Aljilehawi, a junior studying biology, health and society at the University of Michigan.
People interpreted the drawing differently. Aljilehawi said some task force members thought the werewolf was based on the Michigan Dogman, a humanoid dog who legend says was seen around North Michigan in the 1880s. Aljilehawi said the sticker emitted “freedom” and “rock-and-roll energy.”
“If you asked an AI to generate the American spirit sticker,” she said, “I don’t think it could have done something better than what we got.”
Angela Benander, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of State, said the design was “delightfully unhinged.”
“It’s kind of a fun spin on just, you know, what feels like a crazy season to a lot of people,” she said.
A few weeks after entering her drawing, Jane learned that the task force, which works with the Michigan Department of State to encourage young people to vote, selected her sticker as a semifinalist. The public could vote for the winners on the department’s website.
Jane said she had just finished swimming in Lake Huron one day in August when her social studies teacher called her mother, Amy, to deliver an update: Jane had won the contest.
“It was really surprising,” Jane said. “I’m standing there in a bathing suit like, ‘What?’”
Jane’s design received 20,000 votes from the public — about 2,000 more than any other sticker, Samantha May, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of State, said in an email.
The department announced the winners on Sept. 4. Some of the other winners featured a cat holding an “I VOTED” sign, a deer wearing sunglasses and a lighthouse projecting “I VOTED!” One sticker said, “I Voted yay” — with the “e” backward — and another used Midwest slang: “OPE, I VOTED.”
A few days after the announcement, Jane said her classmates told her that her drawing was on their social media feeds.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson posted Jane’s drawing on X with the caption: “Walking into general election season like.”
Derek Dobies, the chief of staff for Michigan’s AFL-CIO, wrote on X: “If there is ever a year to have an unhinged werewolf ripping its shirt off as the ‘I Voted’ sticker … it’s 2024.”
John Oliver joked on his show “Last Week Tonight” on Sunday that he would commit voter fraud to obtain multiple copies of the sticker.
Michigan clerks will order and distribute rolls of the winning stickers to voters in November, and Benander said she expects the werewolf designs to run out quickly. Regardless of voters’ interpretation of her drawing, Jane said, she hopes it will bring them joy.
“They’re going to be wearing this on their chest the day they vote,” she said, “and I want them to be proud of it.”