Did the internet let politics down, or did we? Eric sits down with his friend Katie Harbath, founder and CEO of Anchor Change and author of the new book Disrupting Politics: A Front Row Seat to the Collision of Technology and Democracy. Before spending a decade running global elections policy at Facebook, Katie built GOP.com, ran digital for Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign and led digital at the NRSC, so she's watched this collision from both sides. Eric and Katie trace how real-time analytics pushed campaigns toward whatever got the most clicks, and why social media turned "villainous overnight" after the 2016 election. They also talk about the whiplash campaigns felt when the same tactics went from brilliant to sinister in just four years. Then they turn to AI, where the pendulum has swung the other way. Katie closes with two lessons from the book: good intentions are not safeguards, and panic responsibly.

Get the book: Disrupting Politics

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Almost everything written about AI and elections this cycle is about what it will do to voters. Paul Allen thinks the bigger story is what it can do for them. This week, Eric sits down with Paul, co-founder of Ancestry.com and founder and CEO of SOAR and Citizen Portal, who is applying the lessons of turning a huge unread archive into something personal to the records almost no one reads: local government meetings, ordinances and regulations.

They get into how Citizen Portal transcribes public meetings and links every AI-written story back to the tape; a "newspaper business in a box" meant to make one-person local newsrooms viable again; and why AI agents may be the only way clerks keep up with a flood of public records requests. Eric pushes on whether elected officials will welcome that kind of transparency or just find new places to hide — and Paul challenges the premise.

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This week, Eric Wilson is the guest. Right after Labor Day, Eric joined Prompt.io president Farz Sokhansanj on Prompt.io's Pulse Check webinar to take stock of where campaigns and technology stand heading into the midterms.

They cover the four kinds of Americans campaigns are trying to reach, and why only about 9% of them are the ones actually talking about politics. Whether 2024 really was the "podcast election," and why podcasts haven't worked down the ballot. How AI is showing up in this cycle's ads, and why it should be spice, not the whole meal. The 42% of Republicans in toss-up races who don't have an issues page on their website, even as AI search leans on those pages. Why over-targeting leaves votes on the table. What voters actually mean when they ask for a candidate who's "authentic." And why vendors need to be building case studies right now.

As Eric puts it: the winner isn't the person with the most views. It's the person with the most votes.

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