U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (DFL) is addressing federal election oversight and protections on the first day of early voting in Minnesota Friday.
Klobuchar's home state of Minnesota consistently ranks among the top in the nation for voter turnout, but in the wake of the 2020 Election, confidence in the voting system for some voters has wavered in the state and certainly across the U.S. Artificial intelligence concerns is not helping either.
Klobuchar, however, says new protections are in place this go-around that should reassure voters that their ballots are protected.
"We made, on a bipartisan basis through my committee, some changes to that Electoral Count Act to make sure it worked and one person couldn't just hold it up for days, which is actually the way the old law was, and that kind of fomented into the insurrection," says the senator.
Minnesota's senior senator also says new protections for polling staff should help.
The Senate Rules Committee also passed three Klobuchar-led bills to address the impact of AI on our elections.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation Tuesday that would prohibit political campaigns and outside political groups from using artificial intelligence to misrepresent the views of their rivals by pretending to be them.
The introduction of the bill comes as Congress has failed to regulate the fast-evolving technology and experts warn that it threatens to overwhelm voters with misinformation. Those experts have expressed particular concern over the dangers posed by “deepfakes,” AI-generated videos and memes that can look lifelike and cause voters to question what is real and what is fake.
Lawmakers said the bill would give the Federal Election Commission the power to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in elections in the same way it has regulated other political misrepresentation for decades. The FEC has started to consider such regulations.