Well, it’s that time of year again. Voting. Normally I spend a couple of evenings reviewing my ballot before voting. Not watching ads. Not scrolling social media. Just working through the ballot one item at a time.
This year I tried something different. I uploaded the ballot PDF into Copilot and asked for a short review of each race and ballot measure. The key requirement was simple:
No cheerleading. No campaigning. No telling me how to vote.
Just tell me who the candidates are, what the office does, what the ballot measure actually says, and who pays if money is involved.
That turned out to be surprisingly effective.
The Most Useful Part
For many races, especially local offices, I didn’t need a ten-page policy paper. I needed a few practical questions answered:
- What does this office actually do?
- Is the candidate an incumbent?
- Is there any significant controversy?
- Is there polling?
- Does this affect my taxes?
For judges, I found myself asking something even simpler:
- Who appointed them?
That alone provided more context than many campaign mailers.
The AI didn’t always have polling. In fact, most local races had little or no meaningful polling. Rather than invent numbers, it simply said so. I appreciated that.
Following the Money
The most valuable discussions weren’t about candidates.
They were about ballot measures.
Every time a measure involved money, I kept asking:
Who pays?
and
Who benefits?
For example, when reviewing agricultural tax exemptions, my reaction was pretty direct:
If farmers receive a tax break, where is the requirement that consumers receive lower prices?
The answer was that there wasn’t one.
That’s the kind of thing I wanted to understand. Not whether a proposal sounded nice. Whether the benefit was direct, indirect, or speculative.
The same approach worked well for bonds, school funding, and property tax questions.
The AI Didn’t Get Everything Right
One thing I appreciated was that mistakes could be challenged.
At one point we reviewed a Palm Beach Soil and Water Conservation District race. The ballot formatting was compressed and the AI incorrectly combined multiple names into a single candidate.
I looked at the ballot and immediately noticed the problem.
The response wasn’t defensive.
It simply acknowledged the mistake, corrected it, and moved on.
That’s a good reminder that AI is a tool, not an authority.
Verify.
Read.
Question.
The responsibility still belongs to the voter.
Early Voting
After finishing the review, I decided to vote early at the local library. I even made a reservation using the Palm Beach Couty Link.
Was it necessary?
Probably not.
But it did let me get ahead of two people in line, which made me smile.
As an old IT guy, I consider that successful optimization.
Final Thoughts
What I found most useful wasn’t that Copilot had answers.
It was that Copilot was willing to slow down and work through the ballot item by item.
No lectures.
No pressure.
No assumptions.
Just a conversation focused on understanding the choices.
That’s how I think AI should be used for voting preparation.
Not to decide for us.
Not to persuade us.
Just to help us become more informed before we fill in the oval.
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