Election 2014: App designed to aid young voters

File photo / NZ Herald

A mobile app designed to aid young voters will be launched next week.

The app, Candidate, was created by University of Canterbury commerce and law student, Hannah Duder.

Earlier this year, Ms Duder received $10,000 from the Handley Foundation as part of the Shoulder Tap national recruitment campaign. She was granted the money after pitching the idea, and has used the money to develop the app.

Ms Duder said she was interested in developing the app after realising only a third of young people were expected to vote in this year's general election.

"Our aim is to get at least another 18,000 young people to vote otherwise the views of old people will be the ones that will win this election and that would really suck."

The web-based app can be used on any cellphone, computer or tablet with an internet browser.

Ms Duder said she had been in touch with all major parties while developing the app.

"They have provided policy topics following a survey I put out to young people to see which topics were important to them."

ACT, NZ First, Mana/Internet, National, Labour, Green the Maori parties have all responded, Ms Duder said.

Ms Duder previously worked with Shoulder Tap community and businessman Derek Handley to set up the Virgin Voter Collective, a website to help young voters.

"Our Virgin Voter team has gathered some surprising data which shows youth voter decline is a much bigger issue than most people think," she said.

"A lot of young people feel that politics and voting is quite boring and not relevant to their lives."

Electorates where there was a critically low number of enrolled voters such as Auckland Central, Dunedin North and Wellington Central were concentrated on, she said.

Three Christchurch red zone affected electorates were also on the list.

"A lot of people are out there trying to get people my age get excited about voting in this year's election and we recognise that if we pool all the brains, numbers and activities then we can have a bigger impact."

The Candidate app will be launched on August 20.