Americans rejoice: AI might be hiking our energy bills up to record breaking highs, but it could be just what we need to break free of our dreaded government duopoly.
At least, that’s according to officials from the Independent Center, a nonprofit that studies independent voters.
In the US, voters can register to vote in elections as an “independent,” as opposed to a Republican or Democrat. Of course, there’s little practical reason to go independent, because the two parties have had a stranglehold on US politics since the era of Civil War reconstruction. Yet as Independent Center senior advisor Adam Brandon told NPR, AI could be just the tool to shake things up.
In an interview with the publication, Brandon said the Independent Center is looking into ways to identify congressional districts with a heavy presence of independent voters.
“Without AI, what we’re trying to do would be impossible,” he said.
So far, the Independent Center has identified 40 House seats that don’t fit a hyper-partisan profile, theoretically allowing an independent candidate to challenge the typical Democrat-Republican paradigm. By Spring, NPR reports, the organization is gunning to have 10 candidates established, with a goal of winning at least five.
“This isn’t going to work everywhere. It’s going to work in very specific areas,” Brett Loyd, CEO of the nonpartisan polling firm The Bullfinch Group told NPR. “If you live in a hyper-Republican or hyper-Democratic district, you should have a Democrat or Republican representing you.”
All told, the hope is that candidates winning in AI-identified districts will lead to a paradigm shift, possibly pushing edge-case partisan politicians to abandon their previous loyalties.
How well this works in practice remains to be seen. As economist Richard Wolff puts it, Republicans and Democrats are both two sides of the same pro-corporate coin, meaning “independent” could describe just about anybody who doesn’t fit that narrow mold. That in mind, the type of independent that runs — and the way their specific politics fit their district — is sure to be a major factor in whether or not they succeed. (And it’ll never be easy, thanks to a patchwork of corporate-friendly ballot laws and campaign finance roadblocks.)
In other words, if this scheme works, it won’t be AI that made it possible — instead it’ll be sincere candidates who speak to the anxieties of the masses in a way that the two political dynasties never could.
More on politics: Political Pollsters Are Trying to Save Money by Polling AI Instead of Real People, and It’s Going About as Well as You’d Expect
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