(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) A small group of volunteers for a political action committee is using dating apps to attract more people who would vote for Democrats, meanwhile pretending to be bipartisan.
Kristi Johnston, the national press secretary for NextGen America, explained why it is beneficial to use dating apps to reach potential voters, according to Timcast.
“We started dating app organizing in 2020 when our efforts completely went virtual because of the pandemic,” Johnston said. “We see that a lot of young people are still on Tinder, on Hinge, on Bumble, so we wanted to make sure that we were covering all of our bases and meeting people in every space that we could.”
In the beginning, Johnston tried to pretend that the organization is not advocating for a particular candidate or political party, but is focused on increasing voter turnout overall. However, once matched with dating app users, the 27-year-old would find ways to bring up “reproductive rights being possibly stripped away from young people in Wisconsin” and send her matches a link to a NextGen America pledge to vote in the upcoming Supreme Court election.
“In terms of checking the pulse of the political landscape in Wisconsin right now, there’s no other way to do that than being on a dating app,” Johnston added.
She and 20 volunteers – three men and 17 women – for NextGen America from different parts of the country made contact with more than 500 potential voters, which, for example, resulted in outcome of Wisconsin’s spring election when the state’s supreme court flipped from a conservative majority to a liberal majority with the election of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protawiecz.
According to the organization’s website, NextGen America was founded in 2013 by Tom Steyer, a former Democratic presidential candidate, “because he believed that young people had the power to determine a new, brighter direction for our country on every single major issue that matters.” Timcast reported that NextGen America registered 1.4 million young voters and transported 4.5 million people to the polls in 2020.
“At NextGen, we know it’s always taken the courage and imagination of young people to make our country tackle the biggest challenges we face,” the organization stated. “Our nation needs that courage again to solve climate change, racial injustice, runaway inequality and to save democracy itself.”
