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Artificial intelligence is another threat to democracy [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-12-11

Do you need evidence that dead people voted in an election in which your preferred choice for dictator lost the popular vote by millions of votes and the Electoral College by a few dozen electors, but don’t care if the evidence doesn’t stand light scrutiny? Artificial intelligence might just be the ticket.

To replace the bipartisan Election Registration Information Center (ERIC), which somehow has been working correctly for Republicans elected to Congress, fascists want to put in EagleAI. Devon Hesano for Democracy Docket:

The software, called EagleAI NETwork, is one of the right’s leading replacements for ERIC, which has come under conspiracy-laden fire from the nine Republican states that have left the organization since early 2022. Featuring a comprehensive database full of information about voters, EagleAI claims that the program quickly combs through data and flags supposedly suspicious voter registrations. Activists can then review the flagged names and report them to election officials. EagleAI was founded in July 2022 and developed by Rick Richards, a former Georgia physician, and his son, John Richards. Neither have election experience according to the liberal investigative group Documented, which reported extensively on the existence of the program in conjunction with NBC News. The group’s database of voters is sourced from state-provided data as well as data provided by the program itself. Sources like voting rolls, voter history and business data come from states, while “rooftop and street pictures,” funeral homes and latitudes and longitudes of addresses are among the data provided by EagleAI. The software is also said to interact with the Voter Reference Foundation (VoteRef), a Republican group that dangerously publishes voter information online.

Yeah, that couldn’t possibly be used for voter intimidation.

Once flagged, the registrations are then evaluated by activists who can submit the registrations to local officials to be challenged. According to Documented’s reporting, a March 2023 demonstration illustrated how the platform could “auto-fill voter challenge forms, attach supporting material, and then time the submission until ten days before the election board’s next meeting.” A vigilante then only needs to click a button for the challenges to automatically be sent to an election board.

Okay. So, if I’m understanding correctly, a name can be flagged months before the election board’s next meeting, and EagleAI queues the challenge to be submitted just ten days prior? Something tells me that the number of days wasn’t chosen randomly. And I can already imagine which names are going to get flagged. Alex Rodriguez, Lando Calrissian Washington, Muhammad Hussein, you get the idea.

What EagleAI falsely claims to be able to do accurately, ERIC has already been doing for over a decade. Election officials in seven states founded the bipartisan voter roll organization in 2012 ... States opt in to the coalition, and submit voter registration and department of motor vehicle data to ERIC every 60 days. This confidential, government-provided data allows for ERIC to cross check voter rolls, subsequently resulting in list maintenance reports that are used to clean up registrations. The database worked, finding more than 39 million out-of-date or inaccurate records since its founding. By 2021, membership had ballooned to dozens of states and Washington, D.C., and for years the database was widely uncontroversial. That was until January 2022, when an article on the Gateway Pundit, a far-right news outlet, sparked a cascade of Republican departures from the coalition. The article made numerous false claims about the database, including its security and organizational purpose. Just a week after the article’s release, Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin (R) announced the state’s departure from ERIC and a multitude of Republican-led states subsequently followed, including Alabama, Florida and Ohio. In total, nine states have now left or announced their departure from the database. With these nine states devoid of an effective way to ensure accurate voter rolls, all done needlessly at their own hands, a replacement to ERIC is now necessary. While Alabama has unveiled the Alabama Voter Integrity Database and a handful of states have announced new partnerships, EagleAI is pitching itself as a prime alternative.

Most Republicans today are sore losers who cheat every way they can think of, eager to install an unworthy pile of garbage as dictator regardless of what the majority of voters think.

It’s easy to despair and think there’s nothing at all you can do to stop a Trump dictatorship come January 20, 2025. Today I ask you to do one specific thing: find out what dates your election board is scheduled to meet in 2024. Then put in calendar reminders for nine days prior to those meetings.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/11/2210941/-Artificial-intelligence-is-another-threat-to-democracy?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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