Pirates Looking Into “Election Pokéstops”

The Pirate Party is looking into the idea of setting up “election Pokéstops” to attract more young people to take part in the vote.

Kjarninn reports that in the most recent election – the municipal elections of 2014 – voter turn-out for those aged 18 to 29 was only at about 50%. To help improve this situation, Birgitta Jónsdóttir and other Pirates are currently looking into an unconventional way to get young people to the polls: namely, by setting up Pokéstops at polling places.

To this end, Birgitta is hoping that the company Unity Technologies could take part in the project. The company, which amongst other things takes part in designing the Pokémon Go environment in Iceland, is partially owned by Icelander Davíð Helgason.

“But if that doesn’t happen, then it would be great to get all parties to come together and pay for this and lure young people to polling places,” Birgitta told reporters. “There could be Pokéstops in the polling place, and I think it would be a clever way to get young people to take part in their democracy.”

While no definite date for elections has been set, many ruling coalition MPs have named late October for the most likely window within which parliamentary elections could happen.