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 way people communicate has evolved and diversified dramatically over the last two years. Gone are the days when email and phone calls were the primary forms of communication for many. In both personal and professional settings, people increasingly rely on messaging apps, social media and video conferencing. Meanwhile, many federal agencies are just beginning to address digitizing their paper records. M-19-21 compels all federal agencies to make their records fully electronic by December 2022.

Since April of 2020, Brown has been writing full time on college sports financing and licensing for his newsletter and podcast. An entire section of his website is dedicated to public records he's obtained in his reporting, including the financial reports and coaching contracts at certain schools. Some schools and institutions charge processing fees for digging up records requests, and Brown estimates that he's spent somewhere in the "low three-figures" procuring records from institutions. To Brown, EA Sports' game -- and whether players will appear in it -- is a clear, practical example of how players may financially benefit from the shift in long-standing NCAA policies.

In 2018, Congress established the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI)--a temporary, independent body tasked with reviewing the national security implications of artificial intelligence (AI). But two years later, the commission's activities remain little known to the public. Critics have charged that the commission has conducted activities of interest to the public outside of the public eye, only acknowledging that meetings occurred after the fact and offering few details on evolving commission decision-making. As one commentator remarked, "Companies or members of the public interested in learning how the Commission is studying AI are left only with the knowledge that appointed people met to discuss these very topics, did so, and are not yet releasing any information about their recommendations." That perceived lack of transparency may soon change.