They’ll Use AI to Undermine Elections. We Must Use It to Defend Them.

Authoritarians won’t need to steal elections. They’ll just use AI to steal your belief that the results were real in the first place.

Photo by Susan J. Demas

By Trygve Olson

This is the fifth article in a seven-part series: AI vs. Autocracy: Seven Lessons in the New Battle for Democracy.

In the early 2000s, I worked in places where elections were already broken, at least by Western standards.
Belarus. Zimbabwe. Azerbaijan. Georgia.

I saw ballots that never got counted.
Opposition leaders jailed or exiled.
Fake parties used to split real coalitions.

And yet, even in those places, people still showed up to vote — not because they believed the system was fair, but because they believed it might become fairer if they fought for it.

Technology gave them hope.
Text messaging let activists mobilize quickly.
Online forums offered the first taste of truth outside state-run TV.
Camera phones have helped capture fraud in real-time.

Back then, we believed tech might save democracy.

But that’s not what happened.

Because regimes adapted.
They learned.
Over time, they utilized the same tools — the same platforms and pipelines — to control, confuse, and suppress.

Now, with AI — especially large language models (LLMs), deepfakes, and synthetic bots — we’re watching that same playbook unfold again.

But this time, it’s happening here.

What the Autocrats Will Do

Authoritarians don’t need to cancel elections.
They just need to convince people they can’t be trusted.

AI gives them the power to erode belief in the process, before, during, and after the vote.

Before:

• Robocalls impersonating candidates

• Fake campaign texts, websites, or donation portals

• Disinformation about deadlines, ID laws, polling locations, or absentee voting rules

• False narratives pushed into communities via AI-generated accounts: “Your vote doesn’t matter. It’s all rigged.”

During:

• Doctored videos showing ballot tampering — pushed to go viral during live voting

• AI bots flooding local Facebook groups with contradictory info: “Polls are closed early.” “Stay away — threats at your polling station.”

• Deepfakes or impersonations of election officials or poll watchers

After:

• Synthetic “leaks” or documents implying fraud

• AI-generated videos of “ballot dumps” or fake celebrations

• Content designed not to change the outcome, but to change the story

This isn’t theoretical.
It’s already happening — and it will get worse.

As I wrote in the Battle for Democracy, “When doubt becomes more persuasive than proof, democracy loses.”

I’ve seen this strategy before.
It’s what Lukashenko uses in Belarus.
It’s what Mugabe used in Zimbabwe.
And now, it’s what bad actors — foreign and domestic — are applying to the U.S. in 2025.

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What Democracy Must Do

We cannot stop this by defending the logistics of elections alone.
We have to defend the belief in elections.

That means expanding the front line from poll workers and ballot counters to include:

• AI engineers building detection tools

• Journalists pre-bunking known disinfo

• Faith leaders, coaches, veterans, and neighbors who still hold trust in their communities

We must use AI to defend democracy, not fear it passively.

Here’s how:

Before the vote:

• Pre-bunk common attacks (e.g. “You’ll be arrested if you vote with unpaid tickets”) using AI to detect where they’re likely to land

• Deploy synthetic content detection across social platforms and closed groups

• Train trusted messengers with AI-assisted briefings and plain-language content they can share offline

During the vote:

• Use AI to monitor local channels (neighborhood pages, WhatsApp groups, regional influencers) for fast-moving disinfo

• Equip poll workers and election officials with tools to verify or disprove viral content immediately

• Identify which communities are being targeted — and use AI to route accurate info through the right voices

After the vote:

• Track coordinated attempts to delegitimize the outcome before they go viral

• Push out verified timelines of how results are counted — updated with clean visualizations

• Use AI to generate clarity, not confusion — recapping what actually happened in language people understand

This is no longer about ballots alone.

Three Things You Can Do Today

1. Share how the system works — before it’s attacked.
Don’t wait for the disinformation wave. Pre-bunk the lies about vote counts, polling access, and mail-in ballots. Make the truth visible.

2. Talk about how you trust, not just who.
Show people how you know what’s true. Explain the systems, checks, and human actors you rely on. Model belief that’s earned, not blind.

3. Support local election defenders.
Whether it’s your county clerk, a poll worker, or a local reporter covering the process, they need backup. They are the infrastructure.

Bottom Line

Authoritarians won’t need to steal elections.

They’ll just use AI to steal your belief that the results were real in the first place.

If they succeed at that, it doesn’t matter who wins, because the system itself is already broken.

But here’s the thing:
Democracy is resilient. Belief can be rebuilt.
But only if we act with urgency, clarity, and the right tools.

We still have time.
But belief takes longer to restore than ballots take to count.

Let’s defend both.

Trygve Olson is a strategist, pro-democracy fighter and a founding Lincoln Project advisor. He writes the Searching for Hope Substack. Read the original column here.