Leah Feiger: AI Steve.
Vittoria Elliott: The other is called VIC, and he’s running for mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming. I actually talked to both people behind these bots this week.
Leah Feiger: Let’s actually take them one at a time. The candidate on the ballot in Wyoming is just called VIC? How did it end up on the ballot?
Vittoria Elliott: The guy behind it, his name is Victor Miller. He’s a self-proclaimed public records nerd. This all started because he requested some public records from the state of Wyoming, and he wanted to do it anonymously. He was told, he says, by a city officer, that he couldn’t do that.
Victor Miller [Archival audio clip]: I asked our public records ombudsmen if that’s correct and she said, “No, that’s not correct. They can’t do that. It goes against state statutes.” I got to thinking, “Well, darn. Why don’t they just go by the law? Why don’t they know the law?”
Vittoria Elliott: He was like, “Wouldn’t it be better if there was someone or something that knew all the laws and could follow them?”
Leah Feiger: Enter vote robot.
Vittoria Elliott: Enter VIC.
Leah Feiger: Got it. To clarify, is VIC the bot actually on the ballot, or is it Miller? Can constituents actually literally vote for these AI candidates?
Vittoria Elliott: In Wyoming, you have to be a real person to run for office.
Leah Feiger: That makes sense. That feels like a good rule to me.
Vittoria Elliott: That means that the actual person on the ballot is Victor. He went to register with the county clerk to run for office, put VIC as his name there. He didn’t know what he was going to name the bot. When he came back from registering, he told the bot, “I’ve done this,” blah, blah, blah. He said that the bot actually came up with the acronym Virtual Integrated Citizen. What his campaign promises is that even if he, Victor, is on the ballot, the decisions, particularly document-based decisions where you’ve got to read 400 pages of something to be able to know what a good policy thing would be, or you’ve got to read a lot of constituent feedback, et cetera.
Leah Feiger: Sure.
Vittoria Elliott: That all of those votes will be 100% decided by VIC. He literally described himself to me as the bot’s meat puppet. The person who’s going to go to the meetings, and do the voting, and do all the corporal embodied things one does as mayor.
Leah Feiger: So the chatbot will be just analyzing all of this material and then making decisions?
Vittoria Elliott: Yes.
Leah Feiger: You got a fun letter from Wyoming’s Secretary of State about this, and just the legalities around it. Tell us a little bit about that.
Vittoria Elliott: Right. The Wyoming Secretary of State, they actually can’t certify who runs on a ballot, that’s the county clerk. But they sent a letter to the county clerk basically saying, “We think that VIC,” whether it’s Victor Miller or the bot, “violates both the letter and the spirit of the law.” And encouraging the county clerk to reject Victor Miller’s bid for candidacy. But it’s a little tough right now, because Victor says he’s the one on the ballot. Of course, because he’s a public records nerd who reads the laws—
