Click event on button is sending an icon as the target?

update this because $(event.target) is not always button for this you have to use ternary operator as suggested or replace $(event.target) with $(this) which is always button in the context of selector:

function sendVote(event) {
    event.stopPropagation(); 
    var $btn = $(event.target).is('button') ? $(event.target) : $(event.target).parent();
    console.log(parseInt($btn.data('vote')));
    console.log($btn.prop('tagName'));
}
$(function () {
    $('body').on('click','button.vote-button', sendVote);
});

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Demo fiddle

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or with $(this) which is always button because the event is bound to it and if you click on any child of it then event will bubble up to the dom tree and event bound to button gets executed:

function sendVote(event) {
    var $btn = $(this);  // <-----------------change just here
    console.log(parseInt($btn.data('vote')));
    console.log($btn.prop('tagName'));
}

Simple CSS solution:

button > * {
  pointer-events: none;
}

It's caused by event propagation. You click on the icon, which is inside the button, so the click event propagates up through the DOM from the icon, to the button, all the way up to the document. This results in your click event handler code being executed.

If the issue is that you just want the reference to the button every time that code runs, but you still want it to trigger when you click on the icon instead of the text, you just need to use this rather than event.target:

var $btn = $(this);
...

jQuery will make sure that this always refers to the button, even if the actual event.target element is an element inside it.

Use event.currentTarget which is always the object listening for the event; event.target is the actual target that received the event which is not what you want in this case since it could be the icon.

With event.currentTarget if the user clicks on the icon, it'll bubble the event up to the object listener which is the button in your case. If the user clicks the button it'll still work because again the object listener is your button.