App Tries to Get You to Vote By Comparing It to Hooking Up

Here are some things that are like sex: pizza, driving a nice car very fast, being on high quality recreational drugs at a concert. Here are some things that are not like sex: voting. In fact, voting is not only just about the opposite of sex. But don’t tell that to the earnest PSA and app architects who keep reaching for the youth vote with sexy political apps and ads.

Votr is the work of Vocativ, and it aims to educate users on politicians in a fun, cool way that kids love. The app is designed to look and act a lot like Tinder, but instead of enabling IRL meetups between two people that might possible culminate in some sex-having, it culminates with people spending 15-20 minutes waiting in line at a local elementary school on the first Tuesday in November, where eventually they will go into a booth alone and choose from a list of names of aging lawyers who they’d like to pay six figures to move to DC and do very little. But wait! There are also emojis! Here’s the Huffington Post with more on what Votr offers users.

Votr assesses a user’s ideological orientation by asking questions about the primary color of the user’s state, the user’s educational background, past military service, worship habits and bank account, as well as issue-oriented questions about abortion, same-sex marriage, global warming, gun control and marijuana decriminalization. Other questions ask about the user’s preference for sports or the arts, dogs or cats and Beyonce or Rihanna. Each question is accompanied by an emoji symbol.

The fact that this is the way that we get young people interested in voting makes me feel a little ¯_(ツ)_/¯ but on a bad day, probably more like (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻.

Votr’s developers say that it isn’t meant to be taken seriously; profiles of politicians include real details of their views in juxtaposition with fun facts about the names of their dogs or how much they like skydiving. It also matches people up with senators that they couldn’t possibly vote for. Users can, however, use Votr to connect with their chosen candidate’s campaign page and, if they’re really hot for them, make a donation.