# This year's 'I Voted' sticker came out of an image generator, and it can't spell

> 404 Media's Matthew Gault got an AI-made sticker with garbled text at the polls. Elsewhere, states and towns still pay artists or run student contests.

- URL: https://devisdead.ai/news/this-year-s-i-voted-sticker-came-out-of-an-image-generator-and-it-can-t-spell
- Published: 2026-11-02T19:51:08Z
- Author: DevIsDead Newsroom
- Section: AI vs Humans
- Tags: ai-slop, elections, image-generation, design
- Originally reported by 404 Media (https://www.404media.co/voting-in-2026-is-getting-an-ai-slop-i-voted-sticker/).

Of all the places generated images have shown up this year, the polling place might be the most quietly depressing. [404 Media](https://www.404media.co/voting-in-2026-is-getting-an-ai-slop-i-voted-sticker/)'s Matthew Gault picked up his "I Voted" sticker this election and found it was, in his words, AI slop.

His description makes the case. A crowded bronze design: laurels, an eagle stretched over the American flag, lines celebrating the 250th anniversary, and then a row of gibberish he guesses was meant to say Celebrating Freedom. Garbled lettering in fine detail is a classic tell of older image models. The journalist friends he showed it to recognized it as generated right away.

## The human version is one town over

The contrast arrived within hours. A friend in South Carolina sent a selfie with a clean red-and-blue sticker built around the state's crescent and palmetto. Gault found more: Michigan, Kentucky and Albany run contests where students design the sticker, and Louisiana commissions local artists, which got New Orleans voters a hand-drawn trumpet. The only other generated sticker he found was in Denton, Texas, and that one at least got the courthouse right.

He doesn't say who ordered his town's sticker or which tool made it, and we don't know either.

## Why a sticker matters

Gault's argument is that small things are where norms get set. Every cheap generated flyer or sticker that passes without complaint makes the next one feel normal, until nobody notices. People are deciding right now where their lines are, from data centers to token quotas at work. His is the one civic souvenir he actually enjoys.

There's a practical lesson for anyone shipping image features, too. If the text in an image matters, a person has to read it before it goes to the printer. One proofread would have caught this.

**[Scoreboard](/scoreboard) update:** Humans +1. Hand-drawn and student-designed stickers beat the generated one on looks and on spelling.

Stay undead.