Supply Side I: Politicians, Campaigns, and Elections

Session 8 · Mon, Oct 19

POLISCI 158 · AI & Politics · Stanford · Fall 2026

Roadmap

In this session
Questions we’ll tackle
Before class
After class

In this session

We host Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, who represents California Assembly District 28 and chairs the Assembly Elections Committee, for a conversation about her work on AI legislation. She will begin with a short presentation, followed by a conversation with Simone and student Q&A. We then compare evidence on persuasion and political action, and evaluate one election-AI rule through its mechanism, enforcement and democratic trade-offs.

Questions we’ll tackle

How might AI change who has an advantage in a campaign?
What problem should an election-AI rule target, and how would we know it works?
What separates evidence of persuasion from evidence of political behavior or election results?
Who must comply with a rule, who enforces it, and what trade-offs follow?

Before class

Allow about 20–30 minutes. Read the short selections below and bring one analytical question for our guest. A written question is welcome; you do not need to disclose your political views.

Read

Gail Pellerin’s official Assembly record, California State Assembly. Skim her current role and committee work.
Priority: AB 2839 in the 2024 legislative summary, Assembly Elections Committee (2024). Read only the AB 2839 entry, PDF pages 22–23 (printed pages 19–20). Identify the targeted conduct, the policy mechanism and an enforcement question. This is a historical account of the 2024 law; its discussion of litigation predates the order below.

Read: law and evidence

The 2025 court order, Kohls v. Bonta, August 29, 2025. Read the operative paragraph on the final page, page 24. Pay attention to its named-plaintiff scope. What does this add to the earlier legislative summary?
AB 502: a later legislative update, Assembly Elections Committee, list updated October 1, 2026. Read only the AB 502 row on page 1: Pellerin’s bill was signed September 19, 2026. Use this as a dated signing update, rather than a guide to the amended law’s full terms or enforceability.
The Minimal Persuasive Effects of Campaign Contact in General Elections: Evidence from 49 Field Experiments, Joshua L. Kalla and David E. Broockman (2018), American Political Science Review. Read the abstract. Which elections and kinds of campaign contact does the finding concern? What does an average effect tell us?

Bring a question

Choose a question about a rule’s target, mechanism, enforcement or consequences. For example: what evidence would show that a rule improves the information voters receive, and who could collect it?

After class

Review questions

Choose a rule discussed in class. Identify a protected outcome, a mechanism, an enforcement actor and one potential trade-off.
For each study we examined, identify the population, intervention and outcome. What further evidence would support a claim about an election result?

Go further

Artificial intelligence can persuade people to take political actions, Hackenburg et al. (2026), working paper, version 1. Optional follow-up: read the abstract and Figure 2. The studies concern paid UK participants and observed actions such as petition signing; distinguish these outcomes from voting and read the figure’s binary/proportion and standardized-attitude units separately.

About this deck

Adapted from POLISCI 157 Session 4A (Jul 13, 2026).

Curated by Simone Paci, Stanford University. Drafted with AI assistance (Claude) from the instructor’s course materials and reviewed by the instructor before publication; every external link is checked before each update.