Republican lawmakers filed a lawsuit in December against the Oregon secretary of state’s office for using artificial intelligence to flag misinformation during the 2022 midterm elections, raising concerns about free speech violations.
The former Oregon secretary of state hired Logically AI, a U.K. company, in 2022 as part of a pilot program with the goal of monitoring online MDM — mis-, dis-, and mal- information — narratives, including concerns over mail-in ballots and state election fraud, according to a bid solicitation posted by the secretary of state’s office.
Concerned state legislators wrote a letter to the secretary of state’s office, calling to discontinue using the AI system immediately.
“We have learned that the purpose of this system is to continually monitor and actively manipulate the free speech of Oregonians. We believe that this system as described in the Request for Proposal (RFP) violates Oregonians’ First Amendment rights,” they wrote in the letter.
According to an MDM narrative report obtained by Just the News, online speech flagged during Oregon’s 2022 election cycle included:
- “Mail-in ballots are used to commit voter and election fraud in Oregon.”
- “Future elections can’t be trusted due to the fraudulent 2020 elections.”
- “Voter and election fraud has been happening in Oregon for decades.”
The report also showed that the AI system flagged “high-risk potential MDM narratives” that targeted speech calling for the elimination of mail-in ballots in the state and the implementation of voter ID.
The then-secretary of state responded in a letter, stating, “My office has no authority to remove information from the internet, so there is no First Amendment issue here.”
“The purpose of the proposed system will be to review publicly available information on websites, social media, and blogs, and notify us of threats and misinformation in a manner similar to a Google news alert,” the secretary continued in the letter. “We will do two things with these notifications: 1) when there is a threat to life or infrastructure, we will notify the relevant law enforcement agencies, and 2) when there is false information about our elections, we will use our communications channels to share accurate information with voters.”
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The secretary’s response prompted state lawmakers to file a lawsuit stating that the system’s purpose violates free speech.
Oregon is not the first state to fall into legal trouble regarding election censorship. Former Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’s office targeted social media accounts during the 2022 midterm elections, resulting in a lawsuit that claimed state executives colluded with Big Tech. Prior to the December lawsuit, the Oregon secretary of state’s office issued another bid to implement an AI system ahead of the 2024 elections with the same goal of limiting MDM narratives.