News & Insights
We’re Making History in Real Time.
Our timely insights share informed perspectives on the rapidly evolving story of Election Technology, as it unfolds.
Prioritizing People in Election Infrastructure Procurement
In multiple states, investigations have found that wasteful spending, conflicts of interest, and other issues otherwise addressed directly by federal regulations, were prevalent in procurements for election infrastructure. There is a solution for this as Dennis Mema of our Government Relations team recently wrote in the ABA Journal of Public Contracts Law…
Election Truths and Trustworthy Agents
In my last two posts, I wrote about the problem of falsehood-prone (a.k.a. lying) Chatbots giving out bad information on elections, and about dodgy chatbots that specifically refuse to say anything about elections and other specific hot topics. I answered some who/what/why questions and ended with the question of “What would be better?” This time, I offer a more complete answer...
Election Lies and Dodgy Chatbots
To continue from last time, I’ll pivot from lying Chatbots to dodgy Chatbots. To be specific, I am still keying off of Garance’s fine article about public general-use Chatbots that are emitting falsehoods that deceive and harm voters. So, first let me be specific about lying Chatbots vs. dodgy Chatbots.…
Election Lies, Damned Lies, and Chatbots
With all due respect to the Associated Press (and apologies to Benjamin Disraeli for the irresistible title), I prefer a headline like, “Chatbots Lie to Voters About Elections” better than their recent headline, “Chatbots’ Inaccurate Misleading Responses About U.S. Elections Threaten to Keep Voters From Polls” produced by AP’s Emmy-winning global investigative journalist Garance Burke And that drove me to finally take a moment or three to comment on the substance of Garance’s article…
Who Should Make an Elections AI Service Agent? (Part 6)
In this final installment of how to build an NLA (a domain-specific or DS-NLA) — the how informing the who question (that we started with back in mid-Dec ‘23) — I focus on what may be the most overlooked set of questions about how a system should be built — not just for serving users, but supporting it’s operators…
Who Should Make an Elections AI Service Agent? (Part 5)
In the previous (4th) installment in this series, we pivoted from the question of who can or should build Chatbots, to the challenge of How to build a safe, low-tolerance, domain-specific natural language agent (NLA or “DS-NLA”). This time, we assume for the moment that challenge is tractable and explore the question, “What else is required, in addition to a safe base model?”…
Who Should Make a Voter AI Chatbot? (Part 4)
After an extended holiday break from my last installment on the question: “Who should make a Chatbot for voters?” — I’m back for the 4th installment in this series. This time, I’m pivoting from the Who question to the How question; and I have definitely pivoted from “Chatbot” to “domain-specific natural language agent” (NLA)…
2024: Faith In The Future of Democracy
As I observed last year on the eve of 2023, now on the eve of 2024, faith in the future of democracy is something that has been tested in recent years, as we have witnessed some otherwise patriotic Americans struggle with their waning faith in democratic systems. Despite this, we can still have faith in the future of democracy as long as we remain committed…
Who Should Make a Voter AI Chatbot? (Part 3)
After two installments on the question: “Who should make a Chatbot for voters?” — we’ve come down to 3 observations:
Elections is an area of very low tolerance for inaccuracies, hallucinations, and repeating falsehoods.
It’s a terrible idea to build a so-called “lightweight Chatbot” app on top of the existing services powered by current LLMs from the AI tech-titans.
It’s not a good idea for any of those tech-titans to use their expertise and resources to tinker with their own LLM to be a specialized info service.
So then, given what needs to be built, we can finally consider who in the hec can (or should)…
Who Should Make a Voter AI Chatbot? (Part 2)
In the previous installment of this series, I gave a simple answer of “Nobody!” to the question of who should build a voter Chatbot. The reason was simple: the typical Chatbot is equally simple — and fatally flawed: a thin veneer of web (or App) user interface on top of an application programming interface (API) that connects over the Internet to a massive computing complex run by tech titans. and that’s only the beginning of the challenges…
Who Should Make a Voter AI Chatbot?
One of the side effects of the AI frenzy this past year is that lots of people are talking about the idea of having an AI-powered ChatBot for their favorite thing. Election-land is not immune to this desire. Like everywhere else, the idea is more-or-less similar: “Wouldn’t it be great if we could wave a magic wand and have an Oracle appear that is safe and reliable to answer any question about my favorite topic?” Well as the old saying goes, “Not so fast there, my friend”…
Towards an AI Research Agenda for Elections and Beyond (Part 3)
This is the 3rd of three posts of a 4-part series on responsible domain-specific AI research. Last time, John posted his 2nd part of this longer commentary about the AI research agenda that’s necessary for elections specifically, and a lot of government usage generally. Having explained the particular needs of use in election administration, this time he offers clarity about the needs for government computing and/or public-benefit generally.…
Towards an AI Research Agenda for Elections and Beyond (Part 2)
This is the 2nd of three posts of a 4-part series on responsible domain-specific AI research. Last time, John focused on a couple of prerequisite points relevant to the general idea. This time he delves more acutely into AI-driven “domain specific” natural language agents (NLAs), starting with usage in elections…
Towards an AI Research Agenda for Elections and Beyond (Part 1)
In this, first of three posts of a 4-part series, CTO John Sebes examines the AI needs in election technology. He focuses his remarks on text-based generative AI, the technology behind “chat-bots” and other kinds of natural language agents (NLAs). There’s plenty to say about AI more broadly, but NL AI is the tech that can meet important needs in human assistance, specifically NLAs that are “domain specific”…
What Judy Said; Seriously
When Judy Estrin speaks or writes about technology, it’s worth paying attention. But, I know what you’re thinking: “Whoa — more ‘OMG, AI blather’ that we’re drowning in?” In this case, yes; but stay with me. Estrin (and I) are pro-AI; it's just that to get to the promised land of beneficial use (especially in democracy administration) we need to look at the whole picture...
Will Election Reform In Arizona Prevent A 2024 Meltdown?
Three Arizona counties have attracted considerable attention from news media: Cochise County, Mohave County, and Maricopa County. Each county has had their share of election drama; some played out in the Courts, others played out in tense county Board of Supervisors meetings. All involved agree that the current state of election administration policy and best practices need reform, but that’s where consensus stops. Election reform is a precarious undertaking under ideal conditions. And history has taught that resolving one problem can unintentionally create exponentially larger problems in other areas, along with hefty price tags…
On Our Nation’s 247th Birthday
As we celebrate another July 4th, we thought it fitting to remind ourselves and you are valued readers that nothing can replace reading the original words that shaped our nation’s founding. So, today we offer the Declaration of Independence, in its entirety from the source itself, our National Archives…
Elections and the Fractal Fracas of Misguided Innovation
We’ve recently seen a bit of an online fracas about the word “fractal” in relation to elections and election fraud. It turns out that it’s easy to untangle most of it by focusing on just two questions. To discuss those questions, co-founder & Chief Technology Officer John Sebes and I co-wrote this piece. It sets the table for more conversation about work underway to produce a far higher caliber, easier to use data hygiene engine for voter registration data...
Modernizing Voter Roll List Management
List management is persistent grains of sand in the gears of election information management, specifically voter rolls administration. With the antiquity of Crosscheck due to software aging and neglect, and the sudden, and likely ill-advised partisan souring on ERIC when officials across the political spectrum laud its utility, it’s time to revisit the power of public technology to help, because innovation thrives, unbridled, in the absence of restrictive commercial mandates….
De-Weaponizing Voter Registration News
Settling into my new role here as a senior strategic advisor, I noticed a press release from the good folks in Nevada last week regarding what some might characterize as either interesting, concerning, suspicious or a nothing-burger about voter registration statistics post-midterms. Anticipating that some mendacious minds may try to weaponize that, I have some thoughts…