Susan Shelley: AI won't undermine our elections. Political consultants already did.

The rapid growth of AI has generated more than campaign videos. It's generating complaints about them.

The main complaint seems to be that highly skilled people who are totally outside the closed circuit of political consulting can now go all Harry Truman and nuke the opposition, laying waste to the best-laid plans of the best paid consultants to finally close escrow on that luxury property in Wyoming.

Los Angeles candidate for mayor Spencer Pratt has many admirers with the skills to make videos that resemble music videos or big-budget superhero movie trailers. All the consultants and lawyers in politics cannot stop them.

California's byzantine Political Reform Act, and L.A.'s even more oppressive city campaign requirements, exercise control over political advertising by imposing costly compliance obligations that weed out all but the professionals. But those rules don't kick in until somebody pays somebody. Volunteers can say whatever they want to say without sending a copy of the communication to the city ethics office within 24 hours – an actual requirement in Los Angeles.

These rules are ostensibly designed to ensure that voters are fully informed and not fooled. But voters are misinformed and fooled all the time.

For starters, it's legal for candidates to lie in their ads. The only check on it is the ability of a rival campaign, or journalists, to point it out to the public. Voters may never see those responses.

Even ballot measure materials can be filled with lies, unless someone brings a successful lawsuit challenging the statements as untrue. The time period to file a challenge is very brief, and when it's over, it's over. Voters who are fooled can't file a lawsuit after the election and complain that they were intentionally misled.

Another perfectly legal but wildly misleading type of advertising is the slate mailer. These show up in your mailbox looking like official ballot recommendations from some trusted group or organization. In fact, they're a form of paid advertising, disguised to look like thoughtful endorsements. They're mailed by advertising companies that charge each campaign to be included on them. The art of the thing is making the recommendations appear to be from the police, or a taxpayer group, or a political party, or an organization of independent voters, or an advocacy group for seniors, or some other entity that seems to have your best interests at heart.

Heart is not involved at all.

If you happen to have a magnifying glass, or use your cell phone camera, you can read the fine print on a slate mailer. It will fully disclose that it's not from the police or a political party or whatever other group is prominently referenced in the large print. It will also disclose that the campaigns paid to be included.

The candidates and measures listed on a slate mailer may be worthy of your vote, but being on a slate mailer is not an endorsement. It's a money-making advertising business. Nothing else.

Another form of completely legal misleading advertising is what might be called the Strangely Favorable Hit Piece. This is a phenomenon that may be unique to California's top-two primary system, in which all candidates of all parties appear on the same ballot, and the two with the most votes move on to November.

The purpose of the Strangely Favorable Hit Piece is to elevate the name recognition of a candidate who will be the easiest to defeat one-on-one in the general election. A Democratic front-runner may spend his or her own campaign funds on advertisements targeted to Republican voters, telling those voters how dreadful one of the Republican candidates would be, if elected.

You can recognize the Strangely Favorable Hit Piece by its fabulously flattering photos of the allegedly dreadful candidate, by the fact that it seems to have been delivered to the wrong political party's voters, and by its peculiar message that asks you not to support a candidate who's in total agreement with your views.

All of this can backfire. Too much manipulation by too many people at the same time can create a path to victory for a straight-talking, truth-telling communicator. That's what cuts through.

In California, this might be the year.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley

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