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Election officials are role-playing AI threats to protect democracy

After the ordeal of 2020, Arizona’s election officials want to be ready for anything.

As recently as February, a California man was arrested for a threatening message he allegedly left on the personal cell phone of an election official in Maricopa County, Arizona, in November 2022. As time ticked by, organizers unveiled one new crisis after another: an influx of public information requests, a disinformation campaign, complaints of some voters failing to receive their mailed ballots, and sketchy messages asking for login credentials. Two Georgia election workers, for instance, were the victims of such extreme harassment that a jury awarded them $148 million in damages in a defamation suit against Rudy Giuliani after he admitted to falsely accusing them of ballot fraud.

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