This past August, a creator on TikTok had urged YouTube star, David Dobrik to host a giveaway including 5 Teslas, his signature car. Not only was the creator asking for a giveaway but for entry to the giveaway by registering to vote. This caused an overall rush of entries, posts, and registrations, making this one of the largest U.S Voter Registration Drives.

His contest had started at the end of September when he posted a picture of himself posing in front of 5 Teslas. He had urged followers in the caption to share the picture on their Instagram story, tag a friend, and register to vote. The post picked up over 3 million likes and close to 2 million comments. 

Instagram stories started to become flooded with the infamous picture of David smiling in front of the Teslas with Instagram users crossing their fingers that they would be chosen to own a brand new Tesla. 

When asked why Dobrik was doing this he had answered with the fact that since he could not vote, he wanted to make sure that his mostly Gen-Z audience could (forbes.com). Dobrik, being a Slovakian immigrant who is also a recipient of DACA partnered up with HeadCount.org.

HeadCount.org is a New York-based organization that was able to keep track of all 120,000 people who registered to vote, just from Dobrik’s post. This voter registration drive is making it the biggest HeadCount has seen in the past 16 years, which is surprising being that HeadCoutnt has worked with countless celebrities to do the same thing.

This got me thinking, what influence is social media and influencers going to have on this year’s election? It has been found this year that a majority of voter registrations have not come from political parties, but instead social media!

Not only has Snapchat brought in over 1 million voters, and Facebook has convinced 2.5 million, but it seems like every time we open a new social media app, audiences are being reminded to vote. Senior, Chelsea Asciak (12), who will be a first-time voter this year says that “it is exciting to see how big this election will be and that we are constantly being reminded of how important it is to vote.” 

Overall, it is amazing to see how our modern-day technology is remaining our young people to vote, and if it means bribing people to register, then that is what they have to do. The winners of the giveaway were even told with a quick facetime call from David Drobrik himself, which made these lucky fans, super happy.