Matt Vasilogambros | (TNS) Stateline.org

ORLANDO, Fla. — On a sticky Sunday afternoon in late May, Mark Wendell ambled through Loch Haven Park, a mossy, oak-covered green space wedged between a trio of lakes and the Orlando Science Center.

Among the two-dozen food and vendor tents lining the sidewalks at the Orlando Fringe theater and arts festival was People Power for Florida’s table, cluttered with voter registration forms, stickers and about 50 mismatched pens.

As Wendell, wearing flip-flops and a baseball cap, walked by, he noticed the civic engagement group’s purple “Register to Vote” sign.

“Are you registered to vote?” asked Roxanne Perret, one of the four organizers at the white tent, holding a clipboard and raising her voice over a nearby funk band.

“I am,” he said, “but in another state. I just moved here.”

After Wendell, 62, finished filling out the form, Perret recited a well-rehearsed disclaimer: She would turn in the paper to Orange County’s supervisor of elections within 10 days. He should get his new voter ID in the mail within 30 days.

Perret also handed him a slip of paper with her name and her group’s state registration number — an official receipt that is now required by law.

Without it, the organization could have been liable for hundreds of dollars in legal penalties under a law that Florida passed last year.

Republican lawmakers here and in Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Missouri, Montana and Texas have enacted a variety of voter registration laws over the past four years. The measures add new requirements around registering and communicating with voters and threaten hefty penalties for violations.

The stated goal of the new laws is to prevent fraud, but some voting rights groups contend their real purpose is to dampen participation by likely Democratic voters.

“It’s a huge chilling effect on the organizations who are doing this work, and on voters,” said Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships at the Washington, D.C.-based Campaign Legal Center, which has led lawsuits on behalf of the League of Women Voters chapters and other groups in Florida, Alabama and Missouri.

Diaz thinks the recent state restrictions are a response to robust registration efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed to one of the highest turnouts in a presidential election in decades.

For a century, third-party voter registration groups have been a mainstay in broadening participation in the American political system, seeking out potential voters at festivals, parades or outside grocery stores. These efforts date back to the women’s suffrage movement, and many groups played a pivotal role during the Civil Rights Movement.

Over the past five years, more than 350 groups have signed up as third-party voter registration organizations with the Florida Division of Elections, including county political parties, individual residents, candidates, and religious and social groups.

Many whose focus is on young people or historically marginalized communities say they’ve had to change their operations to avoid fines or felony charges. Some have stopped registration drives altogether.

However, not every grassroots group finds the state law burdensome.

Seeing a gap in registration efforts for Republican voters, Barbara Casanova last year launched Citizens First, a Miami-based nonprofit that also helps people run for office.

The state law means extra costs for printing receipts, and she has some concerns about vague language in the statute, but her father — the highest-ranking Cuban American in President Ronald Reagan’s administration, according to her biography — always told her the GOP had two missions: Grow the party and get good people elected.

“It’s one of the prices we pay to be able to carry out our civic duty,” said Casanova, who serves as Citizens First’s president. “I think it’s worthwhile.”

‘Those fees can stack up’

Under the Florida law, third-party voter registration groups that employ noncitizen volunteers are subject to a $50,000 fine for each one — even those with green cards. They also are barred from using volunteers with certain felony convictions on elections-related charges, or for crimes such as fraud, forgery or perjury.

The state can fine groups as much as $2,500 for each voter registration application that is turned in late. There are fines for turning in forms to the incorrect county. Total annual fines could reach $250,000 per organization. It also is a felony to hold on to registrants’ personal information for future outreach or other purposes.

Last month, a federal judge ruled it was unconstitutional for Florida to ban noncitizens from registering people to vote — finding the effort discriminated against Latino outreach — and blocked the state from enforcing the ban. Still, voter registration groups remain under immense pressure, said Democratic state Rep. Anna V. Eskamani, the founder of People Power for Florida.

“Those fees can stack up a lot more aggressively and just bankrupt your organization,” Eskamani said in an interview a week before the Orlando event.

Last year, the state fined her group $2,000 for missing a registration deadline to turn forms in for the August primary. But Eskamani called the fines “silly,” arguing those voters weren’t planning on voting until November. The state also fined People Power for Florida $3,000 for filing forms with the wrong county; the group said the state had made a mistake, and the fine was rescinded.

“Every day, I’m bracing for some sort of incorrect and burdensome fine,” Eskamani said.

Other Florida-based groups have had to reconsider whether it’s worth the fines or possible criminal penalties to conduct voter registration drives anymore.

The nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Florida, for example, decided last year to stop registering voters using paper applications for the first time since the organization began such efforts a century ago.

To avoid legal liability, the league instead directs potential voters to scan a QR code with a smartphone and register on their own. The league has spent thousands of dollars on mobile hot spots so festivalgoers can use the internet at the league’s booths.

“All of these penalties and prohibitions and difficulties and threats to us have just been extremely painful,” said Cecile Scoon, the Florida league’s co-president. “Under the latest set of laws, which are just so ruinous and prohibitive, we’ve had to protect our members and protect the league.”

The state’s new cap, now raised to a quarter of a million dollars in maximum yearly fines, is basically the group’s annual budget, she said.

For 70% of the 110 or so small, grassroots organizations in the state receiving resources and training from the national advocacy group Black Voters Matter, the new law has pushed them to stop voter registration drives, said Jamil Davis, the nonprofit’s Florida state organizing manager. He said the law is working as intended.

“People who support this bill think, ‘We get enough Black and brown voters out of the way for this election, it gives us a better opportunity to continue being in the seats that we’re currently in,’” Davis said.

He pointed to a 2021 report from Daniel Smith, a professor of political science at the University of Florida, which showed that Black and Latino Floridians are five times more likely than white residents to register to vote through a third-party voter registration organization.

Overall, more than 760,000 Floridians had registered to vote through these groups, according to the report. Smith, the chair of the university’s political science department, wrote it on behalf of voting rights groups during a court case over a separate bill Florida Republicans passed in 2021. That law added fines for returning forms late to election offices.

Behind the GOP effort

Republican lawmakers argued that Florida’s 2023 law was necessary to protect voters who trust outside groups to safeguard their personal information and submit their applications on time.

“Every cycle … there’s additional issues that arise with these organizations, which is prompting the additional need for enhanced measures of protection,” Republican state Sen. Danny Burgess, who chairs the Ethics and Elections Committee, told a local NBC affiliate in south Florida in April 2023, after he and his colleagues passed the measure.

Officials in the office of Florida Republican Secretary of State Cord Byrd declined an interview request, and instead pointed to its January report describing problems that “have plagued the state for years.” The report outlines how groups have at times altered political parties on registration forms without consent, registered dead or fake people, or forged application dates to avoid fines.

In April 2023, after the law passed, Byrd announced$34,400 in fines against Hard Knocks Strategies, a Democratic political strategy firm and third-party voter registration organization. Byrd said the firm showed “blatant disregard” for state laws by failing to return voter registration applications on time or to the correct county. The fines coincided with criminal charges against several members of the group on suspicion of turning in fraudulent applications, which have led to prison sentences.

Republicans in other states have cited similar fraud concerns when enacting voter drive restrictions.

In March, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, signed into law a measure that in part makes it illegal for groups to pre-fill a voter’s name or other information on an absentee ballot application. It also is a felony subject to 10 years in prison for someone to be paid by a group to assist voters with absentee ballot applications.

The Campaign Legal Center, along with the League of Women Voters of Alabama and a coalition of other voting rights and disability access groups, sued the state in April to block the law, arguing that it targets Black political engagement. The center also has argued that instances of bad actors submitting faulty forms are rare and have not led to many ineligible voters being registered.

Missouri Republicans in 2022 passed legislation that made it illegal for people to be paid to register voters. The legislation also required any person helping more than 10 residents with their voter registrations to register with the secretary of state.

However, a Cole County Circuit Court judge blocked parts of the law later that year, putting them on hold until the trial, which is set to start in August. The Campaign Legal Center represented the League of Women Voters of Missouri and the NAACP of Missouri in that suit.

‘This is definitely new’

Back at Orlando’s Loch Haven Park, organizers and volunteers with People Power for Florida scanned the lawn full of Adirondack chairs and yard games. The smoky smell of a nearby BBQ pit filled the humid air.

“Hey there, are you registered to vote?” Allison Minnerly, the group’s communications director, asked passersby. “Is your address up to date?” “Do you need help requesting a mail ballot?”

The crowd seemed politically engaged — volunteers only snagged a handful of takers, including local resident Crissie Auguste, 28, who updated the address on her voter registration.

“My parents are telling me I finally need to change my address,” she told Minnerly, signing the form as she clasped an umbrella under the other arm to block the intense sun.

The group updated several other registrations and talked through questions people asked about upcoming elections. They handed out dozens of purple-and-pink pamphlets and stickers.

The registration drive at the festival also gave the group a chance to train new volunteers.

Earlier in the day, Minnerly walked Jackie Stealey through an affidavit, asking her to sign that she attests under penalty of perjury that she is not a felon and is a U.S. citizen. The federal court had just ruled the latter requirement unconstitutional, but the organization had not discussed it with their legal team yet.

The new restrictions have made it difficult to recruit volunteers — not everyone is comfortable giving their personal information to people they help register to vote, Minnerly said. The restrictions also mean it takes more time to train new volunteers.

“This is definitely new,” she said. “We have to do a lot more to not expose ourselves to increased risk.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By ALI SWENSON, DAN MERICA and GARANCE BURKE (Associated Press)

Adrian Perkins was running for reelection as the mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, when he was surprised by a harsh campaign hit piece.

The satirical TV commercial, paid for by a rival political action committee, used artificial intelligence to depict Perkins as a high school student who had been called into the principal’s office. Instead of giving a tongue-lashing for cheating on a test or getting in a fight, the principal blasted Perkins for failing to keep communities safe and create jobs.

The video superimposed Perkins’ face onto the body of an actor playing him. Although the ad was labeled as being created with “deep learning computer technology,” Perkins said it was powerful and resonated with voters. He didn’t have enough money or campaign staff to counteract it, and thinks it was one of many reasons he lost the 2022 race. A representative for the group behind the ad did not respond to a request for comment.

“One hundred percent the deepfake ad affected our campaign because we were a down-ballot, less resourced place,” said Perkins, a Democrat. “You had to pick and choose where you put your efforts.”

While such attacks are staples of the rough-and-tumble of political campaigning, the ad targeting Perkins was notable: It’s believed to be one of the first examples of an AI deepfake deployed in a political race in the U.S. It also foreshadowed a dilemma facing candidates in scores of state and local races this year as generative AI has become more widespread and easier to use.

The technology — which can do everything from streamlining mundane campaign tasks to creating fake images, video or audio — already has been deployed in some national races around the country and has spread far more widely in elections across the globe. Despite its power as a tool to mislead, efforts to regulate it have been piecemeal or delayed, a gap that could have the greatest impact on lower-profile races down the ballot.

Artificial intelligence is a double-edged sword for candidates running such campaigns. Inexpensive, user-friendly AI models can help them save money and time on some of their day-to-day tasks. But they often don’t have the staff or expertise to combat AI-generated falsehoods, adding to fears that an eleventh-hour deepfake could fool enough voters to tilt races decided by narrow margins.

“AI-enabled threats affect close races and low-profile contests where slight shifts matter and where there are often fewer resources correcting misleading stories,” said Josh Lawson, director of AI and democracy for the Aspen Institute.

National safeguards lacking

Some local candidates already have faced criticism for deploying AI in misleading ways, from a Republican state senate candidate in Tennessee who used an AI headshot to make himself look slimmer and younger to Philadelphia’s Democratic sheriff, whose reelection campaign promoted fake news stories generated by ChatGPT.

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One challenge in separating fact from fiction is the decline of local news outlets, which in many places has meant far less coverage of candidates running for state and local office, especially reporting that digs into candidates’ backgrounds and how their campaigns operate. The lack of familiarity with candidates could make voters more open to believing fake information, said U.S. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia.

The Democrat, who has worked extensively on AI-related legislation as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said AI-generated misinformation is easier to spot and combat in high-profile races because they are under greater scrutiny. When an AI-generated robocall impersonated President Joe Biden to discourage voters from going to the polls in the New Hampshire primary this year, it was quickly reported in the media and investigated, resulting in serious consequences for the players behind it.

More than a third of states have passed laws regulating artificial intelligence in politics, and legislation aimed specifically at fighting election-related deepfakes has received bipartisan support in each state where it has passed, according to the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

But Congress has yet to act, despite several bipartisan groups of lawmakers proposing such legislation.

“Congress is pathetic,” said Warner, who said he was pessimistic about Congress passing any legislation protecting elections from AI interference this year.

Travis Brimm, executive director of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, called the specter of AI misinformation in down-ballot races an evolving issue in which people are “still working to figure out the best way forward.”

“This is a real challenge, and that’s why you’ve seen Democratic secretaries jump to address it and pass real legislation with real penalties around the abuse of AI,” Brimm said.

A spokesperson for the Republican Secretaries of State Committee did not respond to the AP’s request for comment.

How do you regulate integrity?

While experts and lawmakers worry about how generative AI attacks could skew an election, some candidates for state or local office said AI tools have proven invaluable to their campaigns. The powerful computer systems, software or processes can emulate aspects of human work and cognition.

Glenn Cook, a Republican running for a state legislative seat in southeastern Georgia, is less well-known and has much less campaign cash than the incumbent he is facing in a runoff election on Tuesday. So, he has invested in a digital consultant who creates much of his campaign’s content using inexpensive, publicly available generative AI models.

On his website, AI-generated articles are peppered with AI-generated images of community members smiling and chatting, none of whom actually exist. AI-generated podcast episodes use a cloned version of his voice to narrate his policy positions.

Cook said he reviews everything before it is made public. The savings — in both time and money — have let him knock on more doors in the district and attend more in-person campaign events.

“My wife and I did 4,500 doors down here,” he said. “It frees you up to do a lot.”

Cook’s opponent, Republican state Rep. Steven Sainz, said he thinks Cook “hides behind what amounts to a robot instead of authentically communicating his opinions to voters.”

“I’m not running on artificially generated promises, but real-world results,” Sainz said, adding that he isn’t using AI in his own campaign.

Republican voters in the district weren’t sure what to make of the use of AI in the race, but said they cared most about the candidates’ values and outreach on the campaign trail. Patricia Rowell, a retired Cook voter, said she likes that he’s been in her community three or four times while campaigning, while Mike Perry, a self-employed Sainz voter, said he’s felt more personal contact from Sainz.

He said the expanded use of AI in politics is inevitable, but wondered how voters would be able to differentiate between what’s true and what’s not.

“It’s free speech, you know, and I don’t want to discourage free speech, but it comes down to the integrity of the people putting it out,” he said. “And I don’t know how you regulate integrity. It’s pretty tough.”

Local campaigns are vulnerable

Digital firms that market AI models for political campaigns told the AP most of the AI use in local campaigns so far is minimal and designed to boost efficiency for tedious tasks, such as analyzing survey data or drafting social media copy that meets a certain word limit.

Political consultants are increasingly dabbling with AI tools to see what works, according to a new report from a team led by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin. More than 20 political operatives from across the ideological spectrum told researchers they were experimenting with generative AI models in this year’s campaigns, even though they also feared that less scrupulous actors might be doing the same.

“Local-level elections will be so much more challenging because people will be attacking,” said Zelly Martin, the report’s lead author and a senior research fellow at the university’s Center for Media Engagement. “And what recourse do they have to fight back, as opposed to Biden and Trump who have many more resources to fend off attacks?”

There are immense differences in staffing, money and expertise between down-ballot campaigns — for state legislator, mayor, school board or any other local position —- and races for federal office. Where a local campaign might have just a handful of staffers, competitive U.S. House and Senate campaigns may have dozens and presidential operations can balloon to the thousands by the end of the campaign.

The campaigns for Biden and former President Donald Trump are both experimenting with AI to enhance fundraising and voter outreach efforts. Mia Ehrenberg, a spokesperson for the Biden campaign, said they also have a plan to debunk AI-generated misinformation. A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to the AP’s questions about their plans for handling AI-generated misinformation.

Perkins, the former Shreveport mayor, had a small team that decided to ignore the attack and keep campaigning when the deepfake of him being hauled into the principal’s office hit local TV. He said he viewed the deepfake ad against him as a typical dirty trick at the time, but the rise of AI in just two years since his campaign has made him realize the technology’s power as a tool to mislead voters.

“In politics, people are always going to push the envelope a bit to be effective,” he said. “We had no idea how significant it would be.”

Burke reported from San Francisco, Merica from Washington and Swenson from New York.

This story is part of an Associated Press series, “The AI Campaign,” exploring the influence of artificial intelligence in the 2024 election cycle.

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy, and from the Omidyar Network to support coverage of artificial intelligence and its impact on society. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org

A St. Paul man is missing in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, according to the park.

The 43-year-old man last was seen kayaking Saturday on Jackson Lake. He and a friend left Colter Bay and planned to go to Waterfalls Canyon on the lake’s west shore.

The friend lost sight of the man around 2 p.m. and tried to return to Colter Bay, but wasn’t able to because wind gusts were up to 25 mph, the national park posted on social media. The water temperature was less than 45 degrees. The man wasn’t wearing a personal flotation device, the park said.

The friend landed at Leeks Marina and reported the situation. Grand Teton National Park rangers searched by boat, and the Teton County Search and Rescue used its helicopter. Searchers found the missing man’s folding kayak, paddle and dry bag floating off Moose Island around 8 p.m. Saturday.

The park said Sunday that the search was continuing by water, on the ground with a focus on Moose Island, and by air. They asked anyone who’d seen the man or his possible belongings to come forward.

The park hasn’t released the man’s name.

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