“I Voted” stickers are a ubiquitous sight on American election days, a way for voters to promote civic participation in a country where more people didn’t vote in the most recent presidential election than voted for the winner. A new paper from researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center examines these stickers’ influence on people’s voting intentions, and asks whether different language choices in this approach to voter outreach might make a bigger impact on civic engagement.
In “Motivating Future Voters: Comparing the Effects of ‘I Voted’ and ‘I Will Vote’ Stickers on Intention to Vote,” published this month in the journal Political Communication, Alon P. Kraitzman, a postdoctoral fellow at APPC, Stephanie L. DeMora, a former postdoctoral fellow at APPC and now an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook University, and Dolores Albarracín, the Amy Gutmann Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor and director of APPC’s Communication Science division, offer evidence that promoting voting in the future tense rather than the past tense – “I Will Vote” rather than “I Voted” – has a greater effect on citizens’ intentions to vote.
Human intentions, including political behaviors, often form rapidly through brief, verbalized thoughts or feelings that cue action, and the specific ordering of words can significantly influence this process. The authors hypothesized that “I Will Vote” stickers would be effective in promoting voting intentions because a future-oriented perspective promotes thoughts about outcomes and planning. When people think of voting in the future, they visualize the activity and its outcomes, set clear goals, and consider potential obstacles and strategies to overcome them. This mental rehearsal strengthens their attitudes and belief in their capacity to successfully perform the intended behavior – in this case, voting in an upcoming election.
Additionally, anticipating future behaviors actively engages individuals’ attitudes and intentions, prompting them to consciously reflect and align their thoughts about the matter at hand – in this case, about voting. In contrast, reflecting on past behaviors, as with “I Voted” stickers, provides less incentive for active deliberation since individuals perceive these actions as already completed.
The researchers ran two complementary experiments about the influence of “I Voted” and “I Will Vote” stickers on voting intentions among U.S. adults who did not vote in previous presidential elections. In the first, they showed 600 participants either “I Voted” stickers, “I Will Vote” stickers, or control stickers exhorting people to “Buckle Up.” Then they measured participants’ intentions to vote. Participants who saw “I Will Vote” stickers reported much stronger voting intentions than those who saw the other stickers.
In the second experiment, the researchers ran the same experiment with 900 participants, but this time also explored why “I Will Vote” stickers are more effective than the alternatives. They showed that exposure to “I Will Vote” stickers significantly enhanced participants’ attitudes toward voting, as shown by their answers to questions about how beneficial, necessary, important, and pleasant voting is. “I Will Vote” stickers also enhanced participants’ self-efficacy about voting, as shown in their beliefs that they could overcome obstacles and make time to vote.
“This research highlights the importance of verb tense in political communication strategies,” says Kraitzman, the lead author of the study, “and in particular the potential of future-oriented frames. When people think about the future, they are more likely to set, strive for, and achieve goals.”
“Motivating Future Voters: Comparing the Effects of ‘I Voted’ and ‘I Will Vote’ Stickers on Intention to Vote,” was published March 10, 2025, in Political Communication. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2025.2472768
