Launching my campaign for local office in Wyckoff, NJ, meant I was now subject to state campaign laws. I’d presumed there was nothing to report, as a write-in candidate not taking contributions. Wrong. Lawn signs cost money and had to be reported as an in-kind contribution to myself, as I didn’t have a campaign committee or bank account. I submitted forms to the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, even more than required, belatedly noticing write-ins are exempt from one form. No candidate’s exempt from the requirement that campaign materials such as lawn signs have a “Paid for” line, so I printed up labels and hurriedly stuck them on my signs.
Lawn signs, I learned, involve a complex calculus. Some people want their political views known; others don’t. Some want the sign, but their spouses don’t. My sign’s displayed by not only Democrats and non-affiliated voters but also some disaffected Republicans. Seeing it on one of the latter’s lawns made one woman presume I’m a right-winger; her husband researched that question, including seeing my video, then asked for a sign. I’m a Democrat seeking to bring competitive elections and more-open government to Wyckoff, a town in which my party hasn’t fielded a candidate for local office since 2020.
Asking people to write your name on a ballot carries a risk they’ll think you’re a nut. But in this instance, it may be a foot in the door, adding a few dissatisfied voters unready to put a check next to a D. When I saw the blank lines on the ballot this year, I’d had enough. I’m asking people to write my name in against all three of the Republican incumbents seeking return to office, two of them for regular three-years, one for one year of an unexpired term. The town needs to deal with issues of traffic, pedestrian safety, deer overpopulation, once-a-week (seasonal) garbage collection, and more. Under one-party rule, problems grow.
Before starting my campaign, I read AI and Political Freedom: The Risk to Democracy and How to Respond, by Matthew Botvinick (Princeton University Press). Local government needs to be savvy about tech changes, which present opportunities for better services, along with dangers to privacy and data security. Botvinick, an AI researcher and neuroscientist, sees AI posing a “triple threat” to democratic institutions: it’ll generate widespread unemployment that feeds populist authoritarianism; cause national-security crises that bring emergency powers; and give vast new capacity to domestic surveillance.
Botvinick focuses on bolstering democracy to withstand such threats, not building safeguards into the technology or its regulation, such as watermarking AI-generated material to limit misinformation. AI’s impacts are coming, he argues, making democratic reforms more urgent: “As our triple-threat analysis is intended to show, AI increases the probability and severity of the relevant kinds of economic and national-security disturbances, and amplifies their probable effects on democratic integrity. Democracy may already be in need of reform, but the advent of AI dramatically raises the stakes.”
An approach highlighted in AI and Political Freedom is “deliberative democracy,” in which groups of citizens analyze issues and recommend solutions. This differs from “direct democracy,” where voters simply approve or reject proposals on a ballot. In 2004, in a large-scale experiment in deliberative democracy, the government of British Columbia asked 161 citizens, selected by lot, to hold meetings over a year to consider proposals for electoral reform; their final recommendations went into a referendum.
Such processes have spread in the past couple decades. In Texas, regulated utilities convened a group of citizens for a “deliberative poll” on how the utilities should generate electricity. Participants studied and discussed options such as fossil fuels or solar, rather than taking a traditional poll or conducting a town meeting. Such deliberations, according to Botvinick, don’t tend to become polarized, but often result in finding common ground.
If elected to local government, I’ll work to ensure meaningful public input, not limited to a handful of people stepping up to a microphone to make comments during public meetings. On questions such as what to do about the deer that are overrunning the town, I’ll want to make sure that a range of options has been considered, and not just by a few insiders.
—Follow Kenneth Silber on Substack & Bluesky. He’s written for Splice Today since 2018.