AI and Democracy: How Are Governments Using and Misusing AI in Elections

Imagine it’s the night before a big election. Your phone buzzes with a robocall. It’s the voice of a candidate you support, telling you that due to a last-minute issue, your designated polling place has moved across town. The voice sounds perfectly real, so you change your plans. The next day, you discover the call was a fake—a “deepfake” created by artificial intelligence—and you missed your chance to vote.

This isn’t science fiction. Scenarios like this were a major concern during the massive wave of global elections in 2024, and as we stand here in 2025, the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on democracy is one of the most important topics of our time. Since 2020, AI has gone from a futuristic idea to a powerful tool that is actively shaping how campaigns are run, how we get our information, and even how votes are managed.

This is a complicated and sensitive subject. AI isn’t simply “good” or “bad” for democracy; it’s both. It holds the promise of making voting more accessible and our governments more efficient. But it also carries the risk of super-charging misinformation and manipulating voters on a scale we’ve never seen before.

In this article, we’ll take a balanced, non-partisan look at this new reality. We’ll explore:

• The incredible ways AI is already being used in elections around the world.
• The legitimate uses that could strengthen democracy.
• The dangerous misuses that threaten our elections.
• The rules and regulations being created to keep our democratic processes safe.

Whether you’re a concerned voter, a policymaker, or just curious about the future, join us as we untangle the complex relationship between AI and democracy.

The Current Landscape: AI in Elections 2024-2025

The year 2024 was a landmark for democracy and technology. At least 64 countries held major elections, representing about 49% of the entire world’s population. And woven through nearly all of them was a new, powerful force: artificial intelligence.

Governments and political campaigns are now spending millions on AI technologies designed to give them an edge. This isn’t just happening in big, wealthy nations; we’re seeing AI tools adopted in both developed and developing countries, though how they’re used varies widely.

So, what kind of AI are we talking about?

• Voter Analytics Platforms: These are AIs that can analyze huge amounts of public data to understand what voters care about, what they fear, and what messages will persuade them.
• Automated Content Generators: These tools can instantly write thousands of different versions of a political ad, social media post, or email, each tailored to a specific type of voter.
• Predictive Models: Campaigns use AI to predict everything from which candidate will win a debate to how many people will show up to vote in a specific neighborhood.

In response to this rapid change, governments are scrambling to keep up. In the United States, the Election Assistance Commission began studying the impact of AI in the 2024 elections, while new laws are being debated to manage its use. This new landscape involves everyone from government agencies and tech giants to non-profit groups working to protect voters.

The biggest challenge everyone is facing is separating the helpful uses from the harmful ones. AI can spread misinformation with terrifying speed, but it’s also a tool that fact-checkers are using to fight back. This is the new reality of our digital democracy.

Legitimate Uses: How AI Can Strengthen Democracy

While the risks of AI often grab the headlines, it’s important to remember that it can also be a powerful tool for good. When used responsibly, AI can make our democratic process stronger, more inclusive, and more efficient.

Better Voter Education and Access

• Interactive Voter Guides: Imagine a chatbot you can ask any question about an upcoming election. “Who is running for school board?”, “What does Proposition 5 mean?”, “Where is my polling place?”. AI-powered chatbots can provide instant, personalized, and accurate answers 24/7.
• Breaking Down Barriers: AI can translate voting materials into dozens of languages in real time, helping citizens who don’t speak the dominant language participate fully. For voters with disabilities, AI can power voice-activated guides or simplify complex political language.
• Fighting Misinformation: The same technology that can create fake news can also be trained to spot it. Fact-checking organizations are using AI to automatically scan the internet for false claims about voting dates or locations and flag them before they spread.

Smarter Election Administration

Running an election is a massive logistical challenge, and AI can help.

• Cleaner Voter Rolls: AI can help officials maintain accurate voter registration lists by automatically spotting duplicate entries or outdated addresses, which helps reduce errors on election day.
• Shorter Lines at the Polls: By analyzing data, AI can predict voter turnout at different polling stations. Election officials can use this information to allocate more voting machines or staff to busy locations, leading to shorter wait times for everyone.
• Faster, More Secure Results: AI can assist in tabulating votes more quickly and can be trained to detect anomalies or unusual patterns in the results that might signal a problem, ensuring the count is accurate.

Enhanced Security and Integrity

AI can act as a high-tech security guard for our elections.

• Cybersecurity Defense: It can monitor election websites and databases around the clock, instantly detecting and blocking cyberattacks from hackers who might try to disrupt the process.
• Fraud Prevention: AI can help analyze voting patterns to identify potential irregularities that need to be reviewed by human officials, adding another layer of security to the system.

Dangerous Misuses: AI Threats to Electoral Integrity

For every positive use of AI in democracy, there is a dark side. The same tools that can educate voters can also be used to deceive them on an unprecedented scale.

Disinformation and Propaganda Campaigns 2.0

This is the most talked-about threat. In the past, creating propaganda was expensive and time-consuming. With generative AI, anyone can do it, instantly and for free.

• Deepfake Audio and Video: This is the scariest development. Imagine a perfectly realistic video of a presidential candidate announcing they are dropping out of the race, or audio of them confessing to a crime. These deepfakes are becoming so sophisticated that they are nearly impossible for the average person to tell from reality.
• Mass-Produced Fake News: AI can write thousands of fake news articles, blog posts, and social media comments that look like they were written by real people. These can be used to create “bot networks” that spread a specific lie or conspiracy theory across the internet, making it seem like a legitimate grassroots movement.
• Manipulated Photos and Images: AI can create fake images of a political rally to make it look bigger than it was, or show a candidate in a fabricated, compromising situation.

Micro-Targeting and Voter Manipulation

Political ads used to be broad, but AI allows for something called micro-targeting, which is both powerful and dangerous.

• Psychological Profiling: AI systems can analyze your online behavior—what you like, what you share, what you search for—to build a detailed psychological profile of you. They can identify your deepest fears, biases, and insecurities.
• Precision Influence Campaigns: With this profile, campaigns can send you hyper-targeted ads designed to trigger an emotional response and manipulate your behavior. For example, they might send one type of voter an ad designed to make them angry, while sending their neighbor an ad designed to make them afraid. The goal isn’t just to persuade you, but to exploit your psychological triggers. This can also be used for voter suppression—for example, targeting a specific group with false information to convince them not to vote at all.

Attacks on Election Infrastructure

Beyond influencing voters, AI can be used to directly attack the mechanics of an election.

• AI-Powered Cyberattacks: Hackers can use AI to design more sophisticated and harder-to-detect malware to attack voting machines, voter registration databases, or the systems that report election results.
• Coordinated Disruption: Imagine an AI coordinating a campaign to send thousands of fake threats to polling places (a practice known as “swatting”) to cause chaos and scare voters away.

Global Case Studies: AI in Elections Worldwide

Let’s look at how this is playing out in the real world.

Positive Implementation Examples

• Estonia’s Digital Democracy: Estonia is a world leader in digital governance. Their online voting system uses AI-enhanced security to monitor for threats in real time. Their goal is to use technology to increase voter turnout and trust, and so far, they have been very successful.
• Singapore’s Fight Against Misinformation: The government of Singapore uses sophisticated AI systems to quickly detect and debunk false information circulating online during elections, helping to maintain a more fact-based public discussion.

Concerning Misuse Cases

• Authoritarian Surveillance: In some authoritarian countries, governments use AI for mass surveillance. They use facial recognition to track who attends opposition rallies and social credit systems to punish political dissent, creating a climate of fear that silences opposition.
• Gerrymandering and Manipulation: In some democracies, political groups have used AI to analyze voting data to draw electoral district maps (“gerrymandering”) that give their party an unfair advantage, effectively allowing politicians to choose their voters instead of the other way around.

Mixed Results: The United States and European Union

The 2024 elections in the U.S. and recent elections in the E.U. showed both sides of the coin. Campaigns used AI for incredibly efficient voter outreach. At the same time, both faced enormous challenges with deepfakes and AI-generated misinformation. This has led to major regulatory pushes, like the EU AI Act, which sets strict rules for “high-risk” AI systems, including those used in elections.

Regulatory Responses and Policy Frameworks

Given the high stakes, governments, tech companies, and civil society groups are all working on creating rules to manage AI in elections.

• International Coordination: Organizations like the United Nations are working to create global standards for the ethical use of AI in democracy, helping countries share best practices and threat intelligence.
• National Laws: In the U.S., states like California and Texas have passed their own laws requiring the disclosure of AI-generated political ads. At the federal level, new guidelines are being developed. The EU’s AI Act is the most comprehensive framework so far, requiring transparency when AI is used in political campaigns.
• Industry Self-Regulation: Major tech companies like Google, Meta, and OpenAI have implemented their own policies, such as labeling AI-generated content or banning the creation of political deepfakes on their platforms. However, enforcing these policies consistently remains a major challenge.

Technical Challenges and Detection Methods

How do we technically fight back against harmful AI? It’s a constant cat-and-mouse game.

• The Detection “Arms Race”: For every new AI that can create a convincing deepfake, researchers are building another AI to detect it. The problem is that the detection technology is often a step behind the generation technology.
• Digital Provenance: One of the most promising solutions is creating something like a “digital birth certificate” for photos and videos. This technology, sometimes using blockchain, would create a secure, unchangeable record of where a piece of media came from and if it has been altered. This would allow news organizations and platforms to verify content as authentic.
• Public-Private Partnerships: No single group can solve this alone. Government security agencies, tech companies, and academic researchers must work together to share information on new threats and develop effective detection tools.

Protecting Electoral Integrity: Recommendations and Best Practices

Protecting our democracy in the age of AI requires a team effort. Everyone has a role to play.

For Election Officials:

They need to conduct regular security audits of their systems, train their staff to recognize AI-driven threats, and be transparent with the public about how they are keeping elections safe.

For Policymakers:

They must create clear and adaptable laws. This means requiring transparency in AI-generated political ads and investing in research to build better detection tools.

For Technology Companies:

They have a huge responsibility to design their AI systems ethically. They must enforce their own policies against harmful content, label AI-generated media, and work closely with fact-checkers and election officials.

For Citizens and Civil Society:

This might be the most important part. We all need to improve our digital literacy.

• Think Before You Share: If something you see online makes you extremely angry or afraid, pause. It might be designed to do exactly that.
• Check the Source: Is the information coming from a reputable news organization or a random, anonymous account?
• Look for Clues: In AI-generated images, look for strange details like weird-looking hands or garbled text in the background. In videos, look for unnatural blinking or a voice that doesn’t quite match the person’s lip movements.

The Future of AI and Democratic Governance

AI technology is not slowing down. The systems of tomorrow will be able to analyze our behavior and generate content in ways that are far more sophisticated than what we see today. This leads us to two possible futures.

1. The Optimistic Future: AI-Enhanced Democracy. In this world, AI makes our democracy stronger. Voter education is personalized and accessible to all. Elections are more secure and efficient. Government is more transparent and responsive to its citizens.
2. The Cautionary Scenario: Democratic Degradation. In this world, AI becomes the ultimate tool for authoritarian control. Misinformation makes it impossible to know what is true, public trust collapses, and surveillance erodes our privacy and freedom.

The future we get is not predetermined. It depends on the choices we make today. We need adaptive regulations that can keep up with technology and a continued investment in building a resilient, educated, and engaged citizenry.

Balancing Innovation with Democratic Values

Artificial intelligence holds up a mirror to our democracy. It can amplify our best qualities—our desire for connection, information, and participation—or it can exploit our worst instincts—our biases, fears, and divisions. It is a dual-use technology, capable of both incredible good and immense harm.

The challenge ahead is not to stop technology, but to guide it. We must ensure that the development and deployment of AI are shaped by our democratic values: transparency, accountability, fairness, and respect for human rights.

This requires cooperation from everyone: policymakers who write the rules, tech companies who build the tools, and election officials who protect the vote. But most of all, it requires us, the citizens. A healthy democracy has always depended on an informed and engaged public. In the age of AI, that is more true than ever.

The future of democracy in the digital age isn’t just in the hands of programmers or politicians; it’s in all of our hands. Let’s stay informed, stay critical, and stay engaged.