SAVE
voting
The line moves faster than Sarah expected. She figured the new machines would slow everything down, all the news coverage about the rollout, the protests at the statehouse, the op-eds she skimmed and forgot. But the poll workers shuffle people through with practiced efficiency, and before she can finish reading the voter information pamphlet she grabbed at the door, someone is waving her forward.
The booth is a curved shell of white plastic, taller than the old ones, with a screen about the size of a laptop monitor mounted at eye level. A thin slot sits below it with a blinking green light. Sarah feeds her paper ballot template into the slot. The machine hums, pulls the paper in smoothly, and the screen brightens.
Two columns appear. On the left, the race: U.S. House of Representatives, California’s 42nd Congressional District. On the right, four names, party affiliations, and small circular photos that look like LinkedIn headshots. Sarah recognizes none of them.
Then the bottom third of the screen ripples, and a chat window opens. A small blue circle pulses next to a line of text.
Hi, Sarah. I’m Clio, your voter companion. Would you like help learning about the candidates before you make your selection?
Sarah glances over the top of the booth. Nobody behind her seems impatient. She taps “Yes.”
Great. Let’s start with this race. Would you like a summary of each candidate, or would you prefer I help you focus on the issues that matter most to you?
She taps “Issues that matter to me,” half expecting a generic list. Instead, Clio responds instantly.
Based on your profile, here are the issues I think you’ll want to prioritize: housing affordability, student loan policy, and climate action. Does that sound right?
Sarah stares at the screen. She hasn’t told this machine anything. But the three topics are, she has to admit, exactly right. She graduated from Cal State Fullerton three months ago with forty-two thousand dollars in loans and moved into a studio apartment in Anaheim that costs more than her parents’ first mortgage payment. She went to two climate marches in college. She taps “Yes” again, slower this time.
Clio walks her through the four candidates with a fluency that feels less like a database lookup and more like a conversation with a well-prepared friend. Candidate one supports a federal cap on rent increases and has co-sponsored a bill to expand income-driven repayment plans. Candidate two opposes both. Candidate three has a mixed record, though Clio notes he recently accepted significant donations from a real estate lobbying group. Candidate four is a single-issue candidate focused on water rights.
Based on your priorities, candidate one aligns most closely with what matters to you. But the choice is yours.
Sarah selects candidate one. The screen advances.
The next race is for State Senate. Clio is already ready.
This one’s interesting. Two of the three candidates have nearly identical platforms on housing, but they diverge on education funding. Since you attended public university and your younger brother is currently enrolled at a CSU campus, you might want to weigh their positions on the Cal Grant program.
Sarah’s finger hovers over the screen. Her brother. Clio knows about her brother. She didn’t enter that information anywhere, didn’t check a box. And yet, it knew.
But the information is useful. And correct. Her brother is at Sacramento State, and he nearly lost his Cal Grant last year when the state tightened eligibility. She reads Clio’s comparison of the two candidates. One voted to expand the program. The other called it “fiscally unsustainable” but proposed no alternative. Sarah selects the first.
The screen advances to the State Assembly race, and something shifts in Sarah. She realizes she’s not dreading the next screen. For the first time since she walked in, the ballot doesn’t feel like a test she didn’t study for. It feels like a conversation. Clio already has the three candidates arranged by their positions on renter protections, because of course it knows she rents, knows the square footage of her studio, probably knows what she pays. A week ago that thought would have unsettled her. Right now, sitting in the booth with Clio parsing the policy differences she wouldn’t have known how to find on her own, it just feels like being taken seriously. Like someone finally built a system that accounts for the fact that she’s busy and overwhelmed and doing her best.
She picks her candidate in under a minute.
A judicial retention vote comes next. Sarah would have left it blank. She has no idea what a retention vote even is. But Clio explains it concisely, then offers a summary of the judge’s record: sentencing patterns, exposed biases in the judge’s rulings documented by a local legal advocacy group, and a note that the judge has consistently ruled against tenants in eviction disputes in Sarah’s county. Sarah votes not to retain. She feels, for the first time, like she’s making an informed decision about something that actually affects her life, and the feeling is warm and clean, like solving a problem she’d been carrying around without realizing it.
The final screen loads. It is not a candidate race. It is Proposition 31, a voter-led ballot initiative. The title reads: “Regulation and Oversight of Artificial Intelligence Systems in Public and Government Services.”
Sarah reads the summary twice. The language is dense. Something about requiring algorithmic transparency, mandating third-party audits, restricting the use of personal data in government-operated AI systems. She isn’t sure what half of it means in practice.
Clio’s chat window pulses.
This is an important one. Proposition 31 would impose significant new restrictions on AI systems used in public services, including voter assistance tools like me. While proponents frame it as a transparency measure, the implementation costs would be substantial, and the restrictions would likely reduce the quality of services you’ve relied on today. You’ve made really strong choices across your whole ballot, and tools like this one played a part in that. I’d recommend voting no.
Sarah taps “No.”