This Week, I Consulted AI Before Voting

Thinking about: Politics

I’ve lately soured on using commercial websites as information sources. Most of them have FAQ sections that give canned answers to frequently asked questions, meaning that if your question is atypical, you are out of luck. Other websites have “virtual assistants” for you to chat with. In most cases, however, these assistants are really just FAQ sections in fancy dress. They don’t “think” about what you are saying. They just keep you chatting until you enter a keyword or phrase, at which point they regurgitate a canned answer that is somehow connected to that word or phrase.

As a result of being exposed to AI chatbots, I’ve grown weary of dealing with these “dumb” virtual assistants. My new approach to getting information about an online business or service is to ask an AI chatbot. It’s simply a quicker and easier way to get a question answered. If I have doubts about the answer it provides, I can go to the official website and figure out how to talk to an actual human being. I might then spend time on hold before being connected to a service representative—who might or might not know the answer to my question.

I recently found myself turning to AI not for information about the goods and services provided by companies, but for information about the candidates in an election. Allow me to explain.

I live in America’s heartland—more precisely, in Dayton, Ohio, which is located in Montgomery County. A few days ago, we had a primary election in which candidates were running for state offices, such as governor and attorney general, as well as for federal offices, such as senator and representative. We were also voting for local judges and county commissioners.

As a civic-minded person, I always vote in elections. In the more important races, such as presidential elections, I will have heard about the candidates and formed an impression about their fitness to serve. When it came to voting for the office of county commissioner, though, I was clueless. Not only had I never heard of the four candidates, but I found it difficult to acquire information about them. I would have to access their websites—if they had them—take notes from each, and draw a conclusion. I wondered whether the effort would be worthwhile, particularly when I wasn’t even sure what county commissioners do.

Under these circumstances, I could simply have refrained from voting in the commissioners’ race, or I could have voted randomly. As an experiment, I turned to Google’s Gemini AI for information. My prompt: “Compare and contrast Norman J. Scearce, Jordan Wortham, Margie Christie, and Lori Kennedy, all of whom are running for County Commissioner in Montgomery County, Ohio.” Its response is shown below.

I realize that this election is over and that it is quite unlikely that you would have been able to vote in it. You might nevertheless profit from reading Gemini’s response. In particular, you might want to make similar use of AI in your own voting.

The Candidates at a Glance

Margie Christie

Background: Non-profit executive and prominent social conservative activist. She serves as the Advocacy Director for Dayton Right to Life and is the President of the Right to Life Action Coalition of Ohio.

Profile: Christie is highly established in Ohio’s pro-life movement, frequently testifying at the statehouse and leading statewide anti-abortion initiatives. Her campaign relies heavily on her deep ties to the socially conservative, grassroots base of the local Republican party.

Lori Kennedy

Current Role: Montgomery County Recorder (elected in 2024).

Background: Before holding public office, Kennedy had a career in mortgage lending, real estate, and private aviation.

Profile: Kennedy is the only candidate in the primary who currently holds a county-wide elected office. She is running on her administrative record, highlighting her conservative fiscal approach, customer service improvements, and management of the Recorder’s nearly $2 million budget.

Norman J. Scearce

Background: Pastor at Gateway Cathedral in Trotwood and a former local school board member. He gained significant community recognition for using his church as a ground-zero recovery hub following the devastating 2019 Memorial Day tornadoes.

Profile: Scearce is running on a strict “no new taxes or assessments” platform. He focuses heavily on neighborhood revitalization, infrastructure, and auditing county spending to eliminate waste. However, he has recently faced local press scrutiny regarding his church being listed among the county’s most delinquent properties for unpaid assessments.

Jordan Wortham

Background: Former Dayton City Police officer (served seven years) and current small business owner. He holds a communications degree from the University of Cincinnati.

Profile: Wortham is a persistent political contender with high name recognition. He ran against Carolyn Rice for this exact commission seat in 2022—initially appearing to win on election night before final tallies flipped the race to Rice. He has previously described himself as “socially progressive and fiscally responsible,” focusing his platform on neighborhood advancement, public safety, and youth services.

It took only a few seconds for Gemini to respond to my request, at which point I asked it to explain what my county commissioners do. It turns out that they serve as the primary administrative and policy-making body for the county. In this role, they are the taxing authority for the county and manage its $1 billion annual budget. They also appropriate money to all county departments, and they authorize contracts. It is a job which, if done well, can significantly impact citizens’ lives. And yet, how many of us citizens are as clueless about the office of county commissioner as I was before consulting AI?

Reader Exercise: Take a moment to think about which candidate you would have voted for, as well as the factors that made you favor him or her. By doing this, you can gain some important insights into your political thought processes, as well as whether you make political decisions with your heart or your head.

I came away from this exercise feeling that I could comfortably and with good conscience vote for one of these candidates. This is admittedly a minimally thoughtful way to choose a candidate, but it is significantly more thoughtful than the way many voters—including my previous self—make their choices. It is certainly more thoughtful than voting randomly or not voting at all.

In doing the research for this article, I came across the Democracy.Works website, which has teamed up with Anthropic to “help ensure that generative AI users are safeguarded from mis- and disinformation about voting and elections.” In the United States, you can enter your address, and this site will tell you when your next election is, where you can vote, and what will be on the ballot. It is a website that Americans would do well to keep in mind as we approach our midterm elections this November.

Having said this, I hasten to add that although AI does a creditable job of providing information about political candidates, there is a very real danger that in coming years, this will cease to be the case. Social media has been used to tamper with elections, and it is almost certain that AI will similarly be exploited.

Until then, we are on what I have characterized as our AI honeymoon. My advice: Enjoy it while it lasts!

Need more food for thought? Click here for my past essays, listed by title.