New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan awoke to a nightmare on the morning before the state’s presidential primary.
He had phone calls—lots of them—from the media and others asking about a robocall with the voice of President Joe Biden telling voters they shouldn’t vote in the primary because the general election was more important—and they should “save” their vote for that.
“It was disturbing, to say the least, because when you get that kind of a question from the media, you don’t know what the message is voters are listening to,” Scanlan told a session on AI and elections at NCSL’s 2024 Legislative Summit in Louisville, Ky. “You don’t know how widespread it is, you don’t know where it came from.”
Clear, frequent communication can help shore up public confidence in the election process.
Scanlan and the state attorney general’s office quickly determined that the call, which went out to about 20,000 voters, was a “form of voter suppression. It was inaccurate. It was intentional. (But) it was not on a scale that really affected the outcome of the election, and so that was a positive thing.”
Political consultant Steven Kramer, who admitted to orchestrating the robocalls, faces a slew of charges and a $6 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission for attempting to defraud voters using call spoofing technology.
As a result of that experience, Scanlan says his office is stepping up its voter education. “We are using messaging that is being used by many states now throughout the country, and that is: There are trusted sources of information that all voters should be aware of.”
Dirty tricks in elections are nothing new, he says—they’ve just gotten more complex, and voters need to know they can reach out to the secretary of state, attorney general, or the candidate or campaign itself to verify information.
Cait Conley, senior advisor to the director at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, happened to be in New Hampshire that day. She called the actions by Scanlan and other officials an example of best practices. “They came out quickly and clearly and provided guidance, and they really just checked the disinformation that was out there.”
Communication is key to combatting election disinformation, Conley says, and a dedicated group of intelligence professionals are coordinating efforts to combat foreign malign operations targeting the 2024 election, such as those from Russia and Iran.
“We see a lot of these peripheral efforts this year where our adversaries aren’t necessarily attacking the process right now, but they’re trying to sow discord around politically divisive issues,” she says. “Over the next several months, you’re going to hear a lot of information from a lot of different sources. The important thing that we all must do is figure out how to identify the signal through the noise. We are going to get flooded with noise—sometimes highly irresponsible noise, in some cases criminal noise. And when it comes to American elections, your state and local election officials are that signal.”
Scanlan says AI can be useful in the election process, such as organizing elections statistics or communicating with the public about disinformation.
“If it’s coming from a trusted source, it’s a good way to get messaging out to voters that can be interactive and that can be really helpful,” he says. “In my office, we’re actually using it as unique form of messaging about misinformation by taking some video and images of some of the historic statues in front of our state Capitol building and having the statues talk using AI in an interactive way. I think the sky’s the limit on how it can be used in positive ways.”
Conley agrees that generative AI can make life easier by performing critical tasks with greater speed. “But there is another side of this, too, where we can’t blindly accept the good without also recognizing the potential bad. And just like every other technology out there, there are going to be malicious actors who are going to look to leverage these capabilities for their own end.”
Conley says while people might mistrust institutions in general, they tend to trust their own local officials. Clear, frequent communication can help shore up public confidence in the election process, she says.
“At the end of the day, so much of this is going to be about state leaders,” Conley says. “It’s going to be about those who are at the desk making the decisions and serving as chief elected official, attorney general or state legislators who are helping make the laws and the guidelines that are going to really shape how we can respond when these things arise.”
Lisa Ryckman is NCSL’s associate director of communications.