When Melissa Kono, the town clerk in Burnside, Wisconsin, began training election workers in 2015, their questions were relatively mundane. They asked about election rules, voter eligibility, and other basic procedures. The job was gratifying and enjoyable; they helped their neighbors while sipping coffee. But over the past few years, everything has changed. Kono now finds herself fielding questions about what to do when approached by suspicious voters who ask provocative questions or gripe about fraud.

This document focuses on the threats, especially near-term threats, that Artificial Intelligence (AI) brings to society. Most of the threats discussed here can result from any algorithmic process, not just AI; in addition, defining AI is notoriously difficult. For both reasons, it is important to think of "A+AI": Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence. In addition to the threats, this paper discusses countermeasures to them, and it includes a table showing which countermeasures are likely to mitigate which threats. Thoughtful governance could manage the risks without seriously impeding progress; in fact, chances are it would accelerate progress by reducing the social chaos that would otherwise be likely.

The video message from Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes warmly greeted the scores of election workers who had gathered at a Phoenix-area hotel in December for a first-of-its-kind drill: "We are very excited that all of you are here," Fontes, a Democrat, began. "You are on the front lines, and this exercise is a prime opportunity for you to hone your skills by experiencing new challenges as a team."

Election deniers are mobilizing their supporters and rolling out new tech to disrupt the November election. These groups are already organizing on hyperlocal levels, and learning to monitor polling places, target election officials, and challenge voter rolls. And though their work was once fringe, its become mainstreamed in the Republican Party. Today on WIRED Politics Lab, we focus on what these groups are doing, and what this means for voters and the election workers already facing threats and harassment. Write to us at politicslab@wired.com. Our show is produced by produced by Jake Harper. Jake Lummus is our studio engineer and Amar Lal mixed this episode. Jordan Bell is the Executive Producer of Audio Development and Chris Bannon is Global Head of Audio at Conde Nast. Also be sure to subscribe to the WIRED Politics Lab newsletter here. You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. Leah Feiger: Welcome to WIRED Politics Lab, a show about how tech is changing politics. Today, we're going to talk about how election deniers are mobilizing their supporters and rolling out new tech to disrupt November.

Many US election deniers have spent the past three years inundating local election officials with paperwork and filing thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests in order to surface supposed instances of fraud. "I've had election officials telling me that in an office where there's one or two workers, they literally were satisfying public records requests from 9 to 5 every day, and then it's 5 o'clock and they would shift to their normal election duties," says Tammy Patrick, CEO of the National Association of Election Officials. In Washington state, elections officials were receiving so many FOIA requests following the 2020 presidential elections about the state's voter registration database that the legislature had to change the law, rerouting these requests to the Secretary of State's office to relieve the burden on local elections workers. "Our county auditors came in and testified as to how much time having to respond to public records requests was taking," says democratic state senator Patty Kederer, who cosponsored the legislation. "It can cost a lot of money to process those requests. And some of these smaller counties do not have the manpower to handle them. You could easily overwhelm some of our smaller counties."

The man charged with administering Arizona's elections isn't concerned about the state's ability to securely hold elections. But he's going to have to persuade millions of other people to feel the same way. Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, was elected Arizona's secretary of state in 2022. A lawyer who previously worked as a prosecutor in Colorado and Arizona, and served as the Maricopa County Recorder before taking office, Fontes must now take on the role of convincing the state's voters that its elections are legitimate. Arizona is possibly the market leader in ridiculous election conspiracies and deniers.