Samantha Bee has a problem: 54 percent of her audience isn’t registered to vote. Yes, more than half of the people who watch Full Frontal—a group that ought to know a thing or two about politics in America by now—never make it the polls. If that number surprises you, it downright stunned the show’s host.

"I continue to be shocked about that," Bee says. "It was so shocking to me that it seemed wrong."

It wasn’t. But that data point has given Bee hope that her show’s latest endeavor—a smartphone app called This Is Not a Game: The Game—might be able to shift some tides during this year’s midterm elections. The concept is simple: This Is Not a Game uses daily quizzes, a la HQ, to educate people about what’s happening in US politics and test the electorate’s knowledge. For cash. (When the game goes live after tonight’s episode of Full Frontal, the inaugural pot of $5,000 will be split among the winners.) Players who get knocked out can earn second chances by completing challenges like making sure they’re registered to vote and signing up for election reminders. It’s the kind of thing you’d think the civic-minded viewers of Full Frontal wouldn’t need, but if the show’s audience data is accurate, they very much do. And Bee hopes a little gamification can help get them to the polls.

"I always had a sense of purpose with this game, but this recent finding has really strengthened that resolve; we can do better, for sure," Bee says of her audience. "Obviously the stakes are very high for civilization as a whole. But we’re not sitting around thinking that we’re going to go out and save democracy, we’re really not. We're just trying to help in any way we can."

Game’s Theory

Full Frontal’s idea of "helping" might not be completely obvious at first. After years of celebrities and whole TV networks trying to increase turnout with Rock the Vote initiatives and "Vote or Die!" T-shirts, how could an app have any more success? Even Bee and her team admit they don’t know. But gamification—appealing to people’s basic desire for reward and affirmation—might be as good an idea as any. Especially now.

'It's a great idea. But if the idea is to raise voting behavior, I'm not convinced a trivia app is the best way to do it.' University of Kansas professor Genelle Belmas

Traditionally, fewer people cast ballots during midterm elections, and young people have especially low numbers when it comes to voter turnout. (Recent statistics suggest fewer than half of them plan on heading to the polls.) But if people can find time to play Fortnite for hours, it’s possible they could devote some of those gaming hours to their civic duty. At least, that’s what Bee and the folks at Full Frontal are hoping.

Will it work? That’s harder to say. Gamification can help induce people to put a few more miles on their Fitbit, or even solve protein-folding problems, but voting's a whole other thing. "It's a great idea," says Genelle Belmas, a journalism professor at the University of Kansas who teaches on purpose-driven gaming. "But if the idea is to raise voting behavior, I'm not convinced a trivia app is the best way to do it."