If you spent the 2020 election in one of America’s battleground states, you probably met ‘Votey Mc Voterson.’ You might not have realized you needed the plump, innocent, smooshable features of an animated ballot to wax lyrically about how to vote… until you found yourself humming his jingle. Maybe you found Votey and his upbeat attitude a little strange? But then, hadn’t ‘strange’ become the flavor of everything at the time?

We’ll no doubt all be sharing stories about the 2020 for years to come. My story starts in the closing weeks of the election. When I shot Biden For President some out-of-the-box ideas to help fight the rising apathy and voter inequities I was witnessing being exasperated by the pandemic. To my surprise, their team liked my ideas enough to award me a major role in their campaign - a highly unorthodox move.

Where elections in the past had carried the message to ‘get out and vote’. There would be no ‘getting out’ and the ‘vote’ part would have to be taught. But in the midst of a global pandemic and most expensive media buy-up in election history, our ‘lessons’ would have to fight hard for attention.

With streets boarded up and months of isolation and uncertainty playing havoc on the public’s mental well-being, it was obvious that scaring voters into action was not an option.

My solution was two-fold. Be empathetic and get a little weird. 


I fought the sameness of political messaging (and the strangeness of the times) by leaning into the bizarre and bringing some much-needed joy.

But I didn’t stop with ‘Votey.’ Not by a long shot. I created a diverse suite of edutainment, bursting with homor and warmth, much of which was was too peculiar to ignore.

In all, my small run-and-gun creative team produced a staggering 700+ original assets in just under 7 weeks.

With pieces ranging from cinematic short films, bus wraps, plane banners to every possible type of animation, and more. 

So how did we do all this? With an ‘always-on’ working model where me and my team worked “day” and “night” shifts, 7 days a week (so that every moment was covered during the critical last weeks before Election Day). I rotated staff accordingly but, as the only creative director I worked ALL SHIFTS. As the campaign reached its final stages, we pushed content out around the clock and responded to any brief - at any time (2 AM being a favorite and 24 hours being the usual response time).

It’s the most rewarding work of my career and it nearly killed me. So, thank gawd it worked! 2020 had the highest voter turnout since 1908 and the highest youth voters in history. Our work helped to swing Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania - with Biden winning by early and mail-in votes in all. 

Together we changed voting, and made history.