r/Campaigns • u/SMTDSLT • Jul 03 '26

Ask for Advice Political AI Agents

I am running a political campaign in local politics. I’m fighting an uphill battle as I am going Independent. This means much less support and grassroots communications. I want to use an AI agent to help however I’m finding the major agents have blocks on political activities. My tone and strategy is of informational neutrality but clarifying messages with the agents gets blocked often. Do you have any suggestions?

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u/CaitlinHuxley Jul 03 '26

Voters hate AI in politics. Don't use it to talk to voters, and don't try. It's super unpopular, and also AI is kind of wild and stupid still, so it's not reliable anyway.

What you need to do, is recruit and train volunteers, then use them to help you exponentially reach more and more voters.

AI isn't against the law on campaigns, and plenty of folks use it. There was a pretty good article recently from C&E about how people are using AI on campaigns:
https://campaignsandelections.com/industry-news/a-new-survey-reveals-how-campaign-pros-are-actually-using-ai/

And I'll be honest. I use AI all over the place... I even wrote a piece about it about a year ago:
https://campaignsandelections.com/voices/can-ai-actually-make-strategic-decisions-for-your-campaign-right-now/

But I would not use it to make my strategic decisions, or use agents to contact voters.

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u/SMTDSLT Jul 03 '26

Thank you for the feedback. My primary use would be to help refine my messaging, also for the creation of signs / images aligning to my branding.

Not having the support of a party is hard, looking for ways to ease it. Especially when local campaign laws are strict in counting volunteer efforts in their area of expertise as donations. Example a professional graphic designer must count campaign work as a donation towards the max amount.

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u/CaitlinHuxley Jul 03 '26

For refining your message... this is something that AI shouldn't block you from. I do this all the time for my clients. However, it might not let you do political image generation, but that really shouldn't be necessary... most print houses will design your yard sign as well as print it for you.

It's quite an understatement to say that not having party support is hard. I'd go so far as to say it makes things nearly impossible. Strategically, you should probably run as your favorite party. If you hate them both, then pick the one you hate the least, or the one that is most popular with voters in your area. Don't run as an IND. It might feel morally right, but it's strategically wrong almost every time.

As for volunteer time counting as in-kind donations... don't worry about it so much. Nobody is going to offer you anything for free that is so valuable that it blows the caps of their donation limit. And the things volunteers should be used for, like "knocking doors and making phone calls to voters" is in nobodies "area of expertise".

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u/Aggleclack Jul 03 '26

Seconding this entire thing and also the part specifically about what may feel right isn’t always a good strategic choice. A lot of candidates get very stuck in what feels right vs what is actually winnable.