Padilla, Merkley Seek New Election Safeguards Amid Growing Misuse of AI to Suppress Voting and Spread Misinformation

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, and U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) introduced legislation to protect voters in the face of misuse of artificial intelligence (AI) to suppress voting and voter purges amid recent attacks on the right to vote and election conspiracy theories spread by the Trump Administration.

The Fraudulent Artificial Intelligence Regulations (FAIR) Elections Act bans false election-related AI-generated content intended to suppress voters, such as misinformation about the time and locations for voting, and to target election workers for abuse, such as deep fakes. Padilla and Merkley's bill also prohibits the federal government from deploying tools that could be used for voter suppression and allows voters to fight back against wrongful removals from voter rolls if they are erroneously removed due to the federal government's actions.

"The strength of our democracy relies on our elections being safe, secure, and accessible. As the use of AI spreads rapidly, we must ensure there are guardrails in place to prevent it from becoming a tool to suppress votes, spread disinformation, or purge eligible voters from the rolls," said Senator Padilla. "The FAIR Elections Act is an important step to help us protect our elections and ensure voters aren't targeted by bad actors using AI to interfere with the right to vote."

"The ballot box is the beating heart of democracy, and we must use every tool at our disposal to protect it," said Senator Merkley. "In the face of bad actors abusing AI to spread disinformation about voting to further dangerous voter suppression efforts, the FAIR Elections Act will help take on this 21st-century threat and stand up to the Trump Administration's anti-democratic efforts to target eligible voters they don't like. I'm fighting to protect the right of every eligible voter to make their voice heard."

The threats AI poses to our elections are no longer theoretical: bad actors use AI and other new digital tools to file mass voter challenges using questionably scraped public data, which disrupts election administration and threatens to disenfranchise thousands of voters.

At the request of the Trump Administration, at least 25 states have turned over their data rolls for the federal government to determine a voter's eligibility using the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This database is notably riddled with errors and wasn't designed to determine voter eligibility, which has resulted and will continue to result in eligible American voters having their voter registration status challenged, with many states deploying tactics to make it difficult for voters to stay on the rolls and have their vote counted.

The FAIR Elections Act would respond to these threats by:

• Prohibiting the knowing distribution of false AI-generated election content with the intent of preventing another person from exercising their right to vote, such as disinformation about the time, place, or manner of a federal election or eligibility to vote in an election.
• Amending the National Voter Registration Act to ban the removal of voters from the voter rolls unless a voter is determined to be ineligible to vote using adequate and verified voter information.
• Protecting election officials from being targeted or harassed through false AI-generated depictions and banning deepfakes of election officials and workers.
• Prohibiting the federal government from comparing any personal information held by the Federal government against personal data held by a state or local government to determine eligibility to vote in elections for federal office.
• Allowing voters to bring a private right of action against the federal government if they were removed from a state's voter roll and stopped from registering to vote or voting because the federal government ran their information through a federal database, including the SAVE database.
• Requiring the non-partisan, independent Government Accountability Office (GAO) to publish a report to study the effect of the use of federal databases, such as the SAVE database, including whether the federal government is suppressing the right to vote by inaccurately flagging and leading to the removal of individuals who are not eligible to vote, and how accurate this process really is.

In addition to Padilla and Merkley, the FAIR Elections Act is cosponsored by U.S. Senators Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

Their bill is also endorsed by civil society organizations active in protecting voter rights, including Public Citizen, Common Cause, and Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

"The elections process is under attack, as some government officials are attempting to tamper with and purge from the voting rolls millions of American voters. The FAIR Elections Act, spearheaded by Sen. Merkley with scores of co-sponsors, would provide valuable protections to the voter rolls and the electoral process itself, ensuring our right to vote. The FAIR Elections Act is heartily endorsed by Public Citizen," said Craig Holman, Ph.D., Public Citizen.

"The FAIR Elections Act helps ensure our election laws keep pace with the realities of the digital age," said Common Cause's Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation Dan Vicuña. "Bad actors are increasingly using new technologies like AI to mislead voters while flawed data systems put eligible Americans at risk of being wrongly removed from the rolls. Congress must act to protect Americans' freedom to vote and ensure every eligible voter can participate without fear of deception, intimidation, or wrongful removal."

Full text of the bill can be found by clicking here.

A summary of the bill can be found by clicking here.

As Ranking Member of the Senate Rules Committee with oversight over federal elections and California's former Secretary of State and chief election officer, Padilla has been a champion for election security and voting rights. This week, Padilla and his Senate colleagues demanded answers from Trump Administration officials with oversight of the intelligence community and election security efforts about their lack of election security preparation, insufficient coordination with Congress and election officials, and unsupported public claims about voting system vulnerabilities.

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