The Independent View: U.S. Election Campaign Technology for 2018 and 2020

Alex Howard is a Writer and Open-Government Advocate based in Washington, DC, and Former Deputy Director of the Sunlight Foundation. His Article in the MIT Technology Review Sep/Oct 2018 Issue, is the basis of this post.

In 2008, the iPhone was less than a year old. BlackBerrys and E-mail dominated the palms of Corporate and Political Information Junkies, like me. Television continued to be the dominant Medium for Political Advertising and Debates. Social Media was a curiosity. Governments and Politicians who used it were still something of a Novelty. It took the Protests of the 2009, that Time Magazine dubbed Twitter “the Medium of the Movement”, to make Mainstream Journalists and Politicians realize that Smartphones and Internet Connections were fundamentally shifting how we Lived, Worked, Played, Advocated, Campaigned, and Governed.

Since then we’ve been living through probably the most Rapid Evolution of Political Campaigning in recent history. In each U.S. Election Cycle, the Technology used has Advanced and Morphed. The Tools that gave Barack Obama the edge in 2008 and 2012 are very different from the ones that nudged Donald Trump to Victory in 2016.

So where might things go next? What Lessons will Candidates for Congress in November’s Midterms have taken from Trump’s Victory? How will Algorithm changes at a Facebook chastened by the Cambridge Analytica Scandal alter the Mechanics of Influencing Voters? Will 2020 or 2024 look as different from 2016 as 2016 did from 2008?

2018

This year, Campaigns will again Deploy a broad range of Technological Tools to Find and Communicate with Voters, using what they know about them to Personalize Ads, Calls to Volunteer, Vote, and requests to Donate. But the Targeting is becoming ever more Effective as more Data on voters becomes available and Tools for using it get better and more numerous.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has set up a Marketplace of Vendors for the Party’s Candidates. Left-leaning Higher Ground Labs has a Portfolio of Incubated Startups offering Polling, Cheaper Advertising, “Persuasion Science,” and Fund-Raising Tools like CallTime.ai, which tries to apply Artificial Intelligence to attracting Donations.

On the Right-Leaning Lincoln Network’s App Marketplace, many of the same Vendors, from Salesforce to the Community-Management Platform Nationbuilder, are available to Conservative Campaigns.

While the Main factor in the Midterms will be the Voters’ Judgments on the Trump Administration, smart uses of Technology could make a difference in tight Races. The Tools available allow Political Novices to quickly gain Direct Access to Attention and Fund-Raising if their Candidacies and Messages resonate with People, even if they are Ignored by Media Outlets. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Community Activist, Unseated a 20-year Incumbent, Caucus Chair Joe Crowley, (D-NY 14th Congressional District), who outspent her Fivefold in New York’s Democratic Primary for Congress, thanks in part to Her Viral Video.

After the Russian “Dark Ads” and Cambridge Analytica Scandals, will Online Campaigning at least be less murky? Yes, but not by much.

Twitter and Facebook have made Political Ads more Transparent, enabling the Public to see who has Bought Them and putting Advertisers through a Vetting Process. Google is expected to follow suit. But True Transparency would mean having a File of All Paid Political Ads, on a Public Website, with Bulk Open Data Downloads and an Application Programming Interface (API) so that People could get the Data without having to Log into Twitter or Facebook themselves. It would also be backed up by a Law instead of being Voluntary.

Alex Howard has a position on this, since while at the Sunlight Foundation He helped Senators draft the Honest Ads Act. If Enacted, the Bill would not only Mandate Disclosures and Disclaimers but Update the Definition of Electioneering to include Online Platforms.

CLICK HERE for more information about S.1989 - Honest Ads Act.

CLICK HERE to read about the NY BOE Finalized Rules for Online Political Ads.

In any case, these moves address only a tiny part of the problem. Political Organizations and Foreign States have long been able to channel “Dark Money” into Political Campaigns through Nonprofits without Identifying the Source, and in July of this year, the U.S. Treasury relaxed those Rules even further. Regulating Ads on Social Media also wouldn’t Address Disinformation by Foreign States or Reverse the various Supreme Court Decisions that have Weakened U.S. Campaign-Finance Laws over the past Decade.

2020 and Beyond

Expect the Campaigns in the next Presidential Race to use not radically New Sorts of Tools but more of the same: more Data, better Algorithms, and, consequently, more Fine-Grained Targeting of Voters, especially those judged to be Crucial to Tipping a District or a State in a Candidate’s favor.

What will probably evolve faster are the ways Messages to those Voters are Created and Spread. There may be gimmicks such as Virtual-Reality Town-Hall Meetings or Geotargeting sending Voters Ads on their Phones when they’re near Polling Places or Campaign Events, for example. But the Technology that’s likely to have the most Impact is something seemingly less Advanced, Video.

Many more People now have good enough Mobile Broadband to Stream High-Quality Video on their Phones than did just a few years ago. That’s part of why Unknown Candidates on Small Budgets, such as Ocasio-Cortez, can become Overnight Sensations. As Mobile Video becomes more popular, though, it’s also going to be exploited more as a Tool of Misinformation.

Readily available Software for creating Video “Deepfakes,” such as the Head of One Person digitally swapped onto the Body of another, is rapidly Improving.

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), AI Tools that pit Two Algorithms against each other, can be used to Automate the Creation of entirely Artificial but believable Imagery from Scratch.

If the 2016 Presidential Race brought “Fake News” into the Lexicon, in 2020 the struggle to Distinguish it from Reality will reach a New Level. For Companies like Facebook, already under Siege for permitting Conspiracies and Hate Speech to Circulate on their Platforms, this may finally force a Reckoning with Society, and with Legislators and Regulators, about their Responsibility, as the World’s Largest Purveyors of Information, to Prevent the Spread of Personalized Disinformation.