With results in from the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary and Super Tuesday on the horizon, we are entering what will be one of the longest and most consequential presidential elections in U.S. history. It will also be excruciatingly negative and divisive. A polluted and fractured information environment, combined with rogue actors and foreign adversaries who seek to undermine the integrity of our elections, will present a unique set of challenges this year that will test our resolve and make it exponentially harder for the average voter to determine fact from fiction.
The robocall that used artificial intelligence to mimic President Joe Biden’s voice and discourage voters in New Hampshire from coming to the polls during last month’s primary election is a case in point. And national security experts are concerned that foreign adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran could attempt to disrupt our elections — it wouldn’t be the first time, but foreign bad actors have never had such a powerful tool for societal disruption at their fingertips.
Some leading voices in our politics will continue to undermine our democratic institutions, malign our elections, and even incite political violence. Weaponized AI will be one of the chief tools in the toolbox of these disrupters.
Thankfully, the majority of voters, the folks not caught up in conspiracy theories, know better. Every American has had a front row seat to see how elections work. U.S. elections are safe and secure because they are administered by trained election officials at the state and county level who use sophisticated and continuously validated processes for counting ballots. Both Republican and Democratic election observers are subject to all of the same rules and regulations and have equal access to the vote count process, and the public can also watch how it’s done to make sure everything is fair. Most importantly, election results are not finalized until election officials painstakingly count every ballot that is cast, check for duplicates, verify voter status, and give voters a chance to rectify mistakes that might otherwise disqualify their ballot. While the media may call it sooner, election officials will never certify an election until every legal ballot is counted.
These are the basic facts we need to remind voters about to increase public confidence in the results of what is shaping up to be the most politically toxic election ever. Unfortunately, this isn’t the type of message that many of us are likely to see on our social media feeds. Today’s information environment is dominated by an unchecked Big Tech industry that cares more about their bottom line than fostering accurate information and civil political debate. The rapid proliferation of advanced artificial intelligence and deepfake technology will make everything that’s bad about social media worse.
Bombastic rhetoric and conspiracy theories will float to the top of our newsfeeds, driven by opaque algorithms designed to trigger fear, resentment, and anger and reward division and outrage. In the absence of responsible safeguards, social media companies have consistently made decisions that maximize profits regardless of the negative impact on our national security and democratic republic.
Federal action that curbs the use of fake images and videos generated by AI in elections and political campaigns is clearly needed. But in the absence of such action, we need social media companies to amplify trusted messengers, not conspiracy theory grifters. Platforms must also grow their teams focused on election integrity and combating false information, not cut them.
The strength of our democracy demands an electorate capable of discerning credible sources from sensationalized narratives. Giving voters the information and tools they need to make informed decisions is up to all of us committed to the preservation of our democracy, including news organizations and players in the political process.
We need to make it easy for voters to access trustworthy sources of information. We need to elevate the election officials who make our democratic system hum, instead of politicizing and disparaging election administrators.
No matter the propaganda and vitriol that will surely permeate throughout this election cycle, one thing is certain: we can count on election officials to once again administer free, safe, and secure elections. These officials, the faces of democracy, are also our friends and neighbors. They have become experts in cybersecurity, digital communication, public relations, and ballot audits, all while implementing new state election laws and continuing to meet their core responsibilities with insufficient resources.
It is also vital — now and over the long-term — that Congress makes a significant investment in our elections and provide adequate, regular, and stable funding for local and state election officials.
Democracy was never intended to be a mantle left to the ‘political elite’ to manage, or for any one party to claim ownership over. It’s something each successive generation must fight to preserve and earn — even in the face of powerful forces who feed off of division, inflammatory rhetoric, and false information about how our elections are run. The stakes couldn’t be higher this year, and that’s why we must work together to instill confidence in our elections, even if the candidate we vote for doesn’t win.
Former Reps. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) and Tim Roemer (D-Ind.) are co-chairs of Issue One’s National Council on Election Integrity.