Texas is one of the hardest places to vote in the United States. According to the 2022 Cost of Voting Index, Texas ranks 46th in the nation in terms of the time and effort required of citizens to cast their ballots. But ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, voting rights issues had taken a backseat to a sea of other headlines.

So, in partnership with the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP), we put the spotlight back on voting complexity in Texas, using one of Election Day’s most iconic symbols—the “I Voted” sticker. In Texas, the sticker doesn’t come close to describing what voters actually do to make their voices heard. So, we revised it, creating a sticker five times longer than the original that included all the unnecessary layers Texans have to navigate, like a ban on online voter registration and strict limits on who can vote by mail.

Ironic in its verbosity, the sticker takes the simple phrase “I Voted” and stretches it into a long run-on sentence—evoking the feeling of jumping through one hoop after another to cast a vote. As you read it, you start to feel the absurdity of the actual voting hurdles in Texas and question: “why has the state made this so difficult?”

The complimenting social assets feature portraits of Texans wearing the sticker with thought-provoking headlines meant to inspire people to overcome the layers and laws outlined in the sticker. A simple call to action let voters know they don’t have to go it alone—the Texas Civil Rights Project is here to help with any issues related to voting.

In the United States, individual states regulate the voting process, which means when and how voters cast their ballots can vary significantly from state to state. Since the nations’ founding, political parties have used this power to make voting more difficult for certain citizens. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. But, recently, a new wave of voting restrictions have been passed by many state legislatures, making voting more difficult.