Texas GOP Group Seeks to Halt Election Certification Over AI Fears Ahead of Midterms

Days before the United States’ pivotal midterm elections, a Texas group affiliated with the Republican Party has asked a federal judge to stop the certification of the state’s upcoming election results. In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, the Potter County Republican Party and its chairman, Daniel Rogers, claim potential election interference by artificial intelligence (AI) or “malicious actors” that could compromise the results of next Tuesday’s elections in Texas.

The plaintiffs, who are asking for a hand count of every ballot from every precinct in the state before election certification, allege that voting machines have components made in China that could allow them to be manipulated. “If a component is tampered with during manufacturing, it could serve as a point of entry for unlawful and malfeasance hackers, allowing for the possibility of synchronized attacks across multiple election machines and jurisdictions,” the lawsuit read.

This legal challenge emerges as several polls show Democrat James Talarico narrowly leading his Republican challenger, Ken Paxton, in Texas’ crucial US Senate race, a contest that could determine which party controls the chamber after November 3. The campaigns of Talarico and Paxton, along with the Potter County Republican Party, did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Al Jazeera.

The legal complaint does not specify if any voting machines in Potter County or elsewhere in Texas have been compromised. The plaintiffs acknowledged in their filing that no previous election in the county was “altered” by a third party, but argued that the possibility of vote manipulation by AI makes the state’s election safeguards easily compromised.

“The real likelihood of a clever and undetected hack by recently developed AI programs, which conceal their activity to avoid detection, reinforces the need for a full verification based on hand-counting of all paper records or ballots in all Texas precincts, prior to certification of the federal results,” they wrote.

Texas state law already mandates hand-count audits in elections utilizing electronic tabulators. However, the plaintiffs contend that this measure is insufficient. “The paper record or ballot provides an independent verification mechanism only if election officials actually compare a complete hand count of all of the paper records or ballots,” the filing stated.

The lawsuit also alleges that US “adversaries,” such as China, Iran, and Russia, possess the capability to access election systems. This echoes previous claims by US President Donald Trump, who in July declassified documents he asserted showed Chinese interference in the US 2020 presidential election, reviving his criticisms of US elections despite a lack of evidence that Beijing influenced the vote he lost that year. Last week, the US Department of Justice also sought to block election certification in Alaska, citing concerns that an independent candidate with the same name as the state’s Republican Senator up for re-election might mislead voters.

Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for Texas’s Secretary of State, whose office oversees elections in the state, stated that it “does not plan to comment on the lawsuit at this time.”