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# Chatbot election answers are dominated by one right-wing dude and an army of AI slop.
- URL: https://werd.io/chatbot-election-answers-are-dominated-by-one-right-wing-dude-and-an-army-of-ai-slop/
- Published: 2026-11-02T21:01:38.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-02T21:01:38.000Z
- Description: One guy set out to influence how chatbots answer questions about the election. He was incredibly successful, and that should disturb all of us.
- Author: Ben Werdmuller
- Tags: AI, Notable links

Link: [*How an obscure website became a force in America’s election information machine, by Ian Duncan and Kevin Schaul in the Washington Post*](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/10/30/how-an-obscure-website-became-force-americas-election-information-machine/)

There hasn’t been enough discussion about the proliferation of reference sites that are built not for humans but to influence chatbot answers. Take [the Ballot Brief](https://theballotbrief.com/), which was designed to influence questions about the election:

> “In tests by The Washington Post, ChatGPT cited the Ballot Brief in 22 percent of its answers to questions about the election. Microsoft’s Copilot cited it in 75 percent of answers. \[…\] Anthropic’s Claude initially turned to established voter guides run by nonprofits — but started frequently linking to the Ballot Brief in The Post’s second round of tests.”

The Ballot Brief is, in itself, built using AI, with one guy — Ben Torres Ezrick — in control. Here in the US, [42% of adults use AI to ask questions](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/), including about the election. That gives Torres Ezrick outsize influence on information people receive that may influence how they use their vote. Given that Torres Ezrick’s most recent position was Chief Marketing Officer at the far-right video streaming service Rumble, that should probably give us some pause.

And even without that potential rightward skew, the Ballot Brief consists of a bunch of content created at scale using AI with little oversight. So inevitably, there are mistakes:

> “The Post identified numerous mistakes on the Ballot Brief. Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) was credited with supporting a bill that passed before he took office — an error that Copilot repeated in a response to The Post. Two Robert Garcias running in California were collapsed into one profile. And several House members were listed with incorrect committee jobs.”

The web has already been insufferable for years because of SEO; this has only gotten worse with the rise of AI-generated marketing content. Now it stands to become a battleground as various entrenched interests fight to have their perspectives represented in chatbot results.

Should newsrooms counteract this with their own set of open, validated information? Or is it an unwinnable arms race that is bound to be dominated by moneyed interests? I’m not sure. But the web is certainly no longer just a place for humans to publish and be heard.