Developed by and for young people, the Elyze application offers an original approach to presidential elections, highlighting ideas rather than candidates via a Tinder compatibility system. Fun and very efficient!
How to encourage young people to vote in the presidential elections of 2022, and, more generally, to take an interest in politics? This is the question asked by Grégoire Cazcarra and François Mari, two twenty-something passionate about citizenship – the first is president of the Les Engagés movement and co-founder of the NGO A Voté. It must be said that the problem is serious: according to the latest Youth Barometer of Ifop, 59% of 18-30 year olds plan not to go to the polls this year. The reasons for this declared abstention are multiple: difficulty in grasping the stakes of the election, inability to find one’s bearings in a political landscape that is both vague and complex, feeling that form wins out over substance in debates and the media. , loss of confidence in the system, institutions and parties, lack of vision and optimism about the future … In short, even if the electoral campaign has not officially started, many are worried about the role that will play young people in the election and in their political involvement in the coming years.
It is precisely to try to find a solution to this problem that Grégoire Cazcarra and François Mari, surrounded by a group of students, imagined Elyze, a mobile application for Android and iOS whose goal is to help young people. to discover in a fun way the proposals of the candidates for the presidential election. Free, neutral and without advertising, Elyze adopts an original and very clever approach: rather than highlighting political figures, it presents ideas resulting in equal parts from their respective programs, in a completely anonymous way, under proposals. For example, “Restore retirement at age 60”, “Include national preference in the Constitution”, “Double the number of intensive care beds (to reach 10,000) in five years”, “Increase the minimum wage by 10%”, “Establish a specific teaching of ethics at school “,” Add burnout in the category of occupational diseases “,” Stop wind turbine installations “,” Reduce the number of civil servants “,” Remove ENA “,” Make compulsory wearing of the uniform in schools “, etc.
A Tinder compatibility test
Approve, disapprove or ignore a proposal with the press of a button and swipe the screen with your finger – swipper, in the lingo – to move on, much like voting in popular dating apps like Tinder. Once a certain number of responses have been reached – no need to vote for the 500 or so proposals currently selected! -, Elyze displays the name of compatible candidates. The proposals are classified by major themes (Institutions and territories, Culture, Education, Security, Defense & Justice, International, etc.), and accompanied by a Find out more button to display a short summary on the subject addressed. The perfect example of the easy-to-use app.
As playful as it is effective, this method makes it possible to choose a candidate by affinities of ideas, and not for his personality, his eloquence or his membership in a political movement. What to approach the election on the merits, and not on the form. And (re) make young people want to take an interest in city life. This initiative, which should be welcomed, is also very successful since the application has already been downloaded more than 30,000 times just two days after its release. And it is not reserved for young people: the “old” can also use it to check that their convictions match their voting intentions. And the result of the compatibility test can be as astonishing as it is amusing …
Download Elyze – Presidential 2022