Harris County, Texas is a large and diverse county that has seen a Democratic trend for the past decade. In the recent session of the Texas Legislature, Republican state legislators passed measures that specifically focus on how elections are conducted in Harris County. These bills are aimed at providing reliable information about where, when, and how to vote; their electoral content policies; their approach to political and thematic ads; and the partners they work with. During the election campaign, Allen was followed by a “tracker”, a person sometimes hired by an opponent who attends campaign events with a video camera or audio recorder in the hope of capturing the candidate saying or doing something that could be embarrassing. Allen reported this tracker with a racial slur and the video was quickly uploaded to YouTube.
This raised questions about the role of data in campaigns and whether Facebook and other platforms were doing enough to protect the security of elections on their platforms. By analyzing this material in real time, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will enable campaign managers to target specific voting blocks with calls that push them to adopt concrete policies and partisan opinions. Thanks to microdata from commercial data agents, which have detailed information on people's reading, audience, purchases, and political behavior, campaign managers will be able to better define their segmentation, reach out to those who haven't yet made a decision, and send them the exact message that will help them make their final decisions. Gone are the publications that bragged about how Trump's Internet strategies had helped him win (unlike when President Barack Obama won in 2011); instead, ads appeared about preventing foreign interference, protecting against misinformation and disinformation, and creating databases of political advertisements. However, there were many stories about how Howard Dean's campaign was innovative in the use of online platforms such as MeetUp and about John Kerry's participation in Friendster. On Monday, Greg Abbott removed the position of county elections administrator and allowed the Secretary of State, a person appointed by the governor, to oversee the elections in Harris County, under certain circumstances. Much of the rhetoric of the Texas Republican Party after the siege describes the measures taken by technology and social media companies as “censoring conservatives”, even though those actions responded to credible evidence that communications incited violence.
Some wanted platforms to prohibit the targeting of political ads, valuable tools that campaigns and political parties didn't want to lose. In conclusion, technology plays an essential role in modern political campaigns in Harris County, Texas. AI allows campaigns to target specific voting blocks with calls that push them to adopt concrete policies and partisan opinions. Social media platforms are also used to promote reliable information about where, when, and how to vote; on their electoral content policies; on their approach to political and thematic ads; and on the partners they work with. Finally, technology is used to protect against misinformation and disinformation.
