AI and Our Elections
Artificial intelligence is rapidly advancing – how will it impact American democracy?
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When we think about AI and elections, we usually think about misinformation and fake news on social media. Maybe you imagine a deepfake video of a politician. Maybe you think about the ways social media algorithms use AI to present one sided information and escalate division. But the impacts of AI are deeper, broader, and more nuanced: artificial intelligence does not just affect information we see online – it could change how we vote, how we participate, how we work, and ultimately – our democracy.
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The Direct Impact Of AI:
The intersection of AI and elections is already here. Per the Brennan Center for Justice, “Artificial intelligence is poised to bring great change to American democracy, from election management to voter outreach to political advertising and fundraising.” Here are some of the direct ways AI is impacting American elections.
Misinformation and Fake News: One of the greatest concerns of AI is its ability to generate convincing fake content at scale. As this technology increasingly improves and creates more realistic videos, there is rising concern of the use of AI in spreading fake information about elections – or even falsified videos of politicians and candidates. The Brennan Center warns that “generative artificial intelligence now has the capability to convincingly imitate elected leaders and other public figures … The proliferation of deepfakes and similar content poses particular challenges to the functioning of democracies”
Strong democracies depend on voters being informed and having easy access to credible information. If that information is tainted by falsified videos, images, and audio clips, it could change the way citizens vote.
Election infrastructure: Okay, we’ve gotten the obvious concerns out of the way. But AI technology doesn’t just play in the realm of mis and disinformation – it also threatens election security.
In recent years, AI has created new cyber security risks. You may remember warnings of scammers using AI to fake the voices of loved ones to call targets, claiming they require money for an emergency.
Election security experts are warning that these same tactics could easily be deployed to “impersonate election officials, offices, and system vendors in order to infiltrate election infrastructure and mislead the public.” At the same time, this speculation has sparked criticism from some election officials, who fear raising the alarm about AI will spark unwarranted paranoia that shakes the public’s faith in the outcome of our elections.
We’ve already seen the ways bad actors have attempted to intimidate voters. In 2020, two men supporting Donald Trump’s campaign launched a robocall campaign in Detroit, Michigan. The calls included “misinformation about voting by mail, saying the practice could place voters’ personal information in a public database that would be used by police departments to track down individuals with outstanding warrants; that a public database would be used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts; and that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would use vote by mail records to track individuals for mandatory vaccines.” In the wrong hands, AI technologies could be used for similar tactics.
The Brennan Center for Justice lays out some of the ways election officials could prepare for the risks posed by AI without sparking a panic about election security, including increased cybersecurity, multi-factor authorizations, and trainings by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) for election officials to be better able to spot potential scams.
Election Administration Uses: At the same time, AI can be extremely helpful in administering elections and increasing accessibility for voters. The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC),uses AI to search for duplicate voter registrations across states – which can happen if a voter moves and registers to vote in a new state. This program streamlines updates to states’ voter rolls. Other beneficial uses of AI include matching signatures to mail-in ballots ( any flagged as having an issue will undergo human review), translating voting materials into multiple languages, and even deploying chat-bots to help answer voters’ questions. AI can also help increase voting accessibility for disabled Americans by converting election materials into audio formats or translating text into braille.
Indirect Impacts:
Some of AI’s impacts on Democracy may be more subtle. Already, artificial intelligence technology has sparked concerns about job replacement. Jobs becoming obsolete due to technological advancement over time is a normal part of our economy – but rapidly replacing workers with AI is becoming a growing concern. Not only are entry level jobs potentially at risk, so are pathways to the middle class. And when our economy becomes unstable, so do our politics.
Jobs At Risk: Since January 2023, postings for entry level jobs have fallen 35%. This has led to job losses for those just beginning their careers (16-24) reaching levels not seen since the pandemic. For example, many data entry positions are being automated. Data analytics positions are following suit, as AI has increased capacity to quickly summarize large data sets. The Stanford Digital Economy Lab found that jobs in software development, customer service and clerical work are the most vulnerable to AI today.
The Harvard Business Review, warns that replacing early-career jobs for the sake of efficiency disregards the disruption to the apprenticeship model of employment – where young people use entry level jobs to learn the skills needed to succeed in their careers. When entry-level jobs disappear, so do the opportunities for that learning, career growth, and upward mobility.
So what happens when entry and mid level jobs begin to disappear – combined with rising costs of housing, food, and healthcare? Unemployment grows, the middle class shrinks, and poverty increases.
Economic Uncertainty And Authoritarianism: Far right authoritarians often use fear in terms of affordability, cost of living, and inflation in order to accumulate power. Historians have long pointed to the ways Adolf Hitler manipulated Germans’ economic suffering to promote anti-semtic propaganda, blaming Jews for the state of the German economy. This method blames “others,” often people who are already suffering, for economic hardship. Today, authoritarian parties and regimes across the globe, from the Alternative for Germany (AfD), to the Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance party in Hungary, blame immigrants for job losses, inflation, and economic uncertainty despite no evidence supporting such claims.
This “otherization” or “blame game” is then used to spread nationalist, isolationist sentiment amongst the populace. Authoritarian regimes then begin to consolidate power, promising to take on those “others” to restore economic prosperity for “real” citizens.
In America today, we are already seeing the warning signs of this. Immigrant communities are currently facing mass deportations, violations of civil liberties, and threats to their freedom of speech. Meanwhile, 1 in 4 American households are surviving paycheck to paycheck. The war in Iran and cuts to our social safety nets in the One Big Beautiful Budget Act have only increased economic uncertainty as prices continue to rise.
There is good news – none of this is guaranteed. As AI replaces jobs, our government has the power to react in ways that help Americans rather than weaponize their frustrations for authoritarian ends. Investments in education, affordability, healthcare, food assistance, and more, can all stabilize the economic impacts of a changing job market.
Rapid Progress Demands Rapid Responses
Politics in 2026 often feels like it moves faster than we can keep up – but meaningful legislation can move slowly. Technological advances aren’t waiting for Congress to catch up. Every day, AI becomes more sophisticated. Our window of opportunity to respond and regulate AI is shrinking – but it hasn’t disappeared. We must demand action from legislatures both at the state level and federally, because AI is a tool that can be regulated, and we should share a collective goal of the preservation of humanity. That’s why our votes in this midterm election will be critical!
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