Snapchat has announced several new initiatives aimed at spurring civic engagement among EU citizens in advance of next month's European General Elections.

Which could be especially crucial this year, as Belgium and Germany will reduce voting age for the first time to 16, joining Austria, Malta, and Greece in expanding a say to citizens under 18. In Belgium and Greece, voting is compulsory, so Snap could play a big role in reaching those younger first-time voters that may end up holding significant sway in the outcome.

Snap has developed a new AR election Lens in partnership with the European Parliament. In return for helping to spread the word, it encourages people to get out and vote.
Snap shares this Lens with all the EU Snapchatters, a reminder to vote, and a link to the Parliament's election website.

That may sound like a small push, but Snapchat's history here is significant.

The company claims that, in 2018, it assisted more than 450k U.S. Snapchatters to register to vote; the figure doubled in 2020 to 1.2 million.

It was only in 2020 that Democracy Works research found that of the 450,000 U.S. Snapchatters who registered to vote through its TurboVote process in 2018, around 57% then went on to vote in the US Midterms, equating to around 260,000 extra votes cast as a direct result of a push via the app.

Snap has also been able to inspire more civic engagement by running direct awareness campaigns and has spurred young people to nominate for local office.

In this context, the reach and the resonance with youngsters that this app boasts is of immense value, and it will be interesting to see how Snap plays its role in encouraging youngsters to take part this time around.

Apart from new Lenses, Snap's is also working with the European Parliament and European Commission to promote their 'Use your vote' information campaign on elections, while also continuing to monitor for misinformation and threats to democratic process.

Snap according to the report says:

"In preparation for the EU elections we have:

Signed onto AI Elections Accord along with other tech companies to agree to use our collective efforts in technologies to detect and mitigate AI-generated content whose intention is to deceive voters.
Added contextual indicators to our community to know if they are communicating with AI generated by Snap
 Mature enough to command my AI on political topics not to engage.
Collobaration with Logically, an internationally recognized independent fact-checking organization and signatory of the EU Disinformation Code of Practice, to help check fact-related claims in political advertisements across the EU. 
While Snapchat doesn't immediately spring to mind as a go-to mechanism to reach voters, new voting rules in the EU could make it a real force and see more political operatives focus on the app to engage younger users.

This is why these steps are important. And whereas an AR filter does not look very much in the grand scheme of political activism, it might play a much more important role than people think.