R Street Institute Letter to Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin in Opposition to VA HB 2479 and VA SB 775, AI in Campaigns and Elections

February 24th, 2025

The Honorable Glenn Youngkin

Governor of Virginia

Patrick Henry Building

1111 E. Broad Street

3rd Floor

Richmond, VA 23219

RE: R Street Institute’s Opposition to Virginia House Bill 2479 and Senate Bill 775

Governor Youngkin,

My name is Chris McIsaac, and I am a Governance Fellow at the R Street Institute. I am writing today in opposition to House Bill 2479 and Senate Bill 775, legislation that would regulate the use of “synthetic media” in political campaign advertisements. The R Street Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization. Our mission is to engage in policy research and outreach to promote free markets and limited, effective government across a variety of policy areas, including the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and election policy.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence are impacting all aspects of modern life, including the way elections are administered and campaigns are run.^[1] These advances have raised fears that technology will be used to deceive voters at scale and erode trust in elections, though the actual impacts on the 2024 election were minimal.^[2] HB 2479 and SB 775 seek to mitigate these potential harms by requiring disclosure when “synthetic media” is used for deceptive purposes in political campaign advertisements. While well-intentioned, HB 2479 and SB 775 are problematic because they place a burden on political speech, expand the government’s role in mediating political disputes that should be resolved by the campaigns, and provide voters with a false sense of security around the authenticity of political information.

At their core, disclosure requirements place a burden on free speech. While the U.S. Supreme Court has accepted their use in the context of certain campaign advertisements—namely, campaign finance—the disclosure requirements in HB 2479 and SB 775 are fundamentally different. Here, the disclosure is related to the substance of the advertisement itself, not just the financial backers. ^[3] By putting forward a new content-based restriction on speech, HB 2479 and SB 775 set Virginia up for a possible legal challenge on First Amendment grounds.

The bill also grants the Virginia Board of Elections substantial authority in resolving disputes between campaigns. Specifically, HB 2479 and SB 775 require the board to determine whether a campaign advertisement violated the disclosure requirement. This means the board will need to make technical determinations around whether an image or audio was manipulated and judgment calls over whether the altered content would cause voters to be deceived. These are highly subjective decisions, and none of this will happen quickly as the board is required to provide a 10-day notice before a hearing. A far simpler remedy is for politicians and their supporters to correct the record when their opponents lie. The competitive dynamics of campaigns already incentivize such a response and countering bad speech with good speech is far more likely to be more effective than relying on a slow-moving state agency to act.

Finally, even under an optimistic scenario where campaigns broadly comply with the requirements of HB 2479 and SB 775, there could be unintended consequences that elevate the salience of false information.^[4] For example, the theory behind requiring a disclosure is that it provides a signal to the public that the content should be viewed with a certain level of skepticism because it’s been manipulated in some fashion. If that mindset takes hold, the reverse holds that content without the disclosure can be trusted because it has not been manipulated. However, the vast majority of political speech will remain beyond the reach of any federal or state regulation, which sets the stage for truly false information—generated with or without AI— to gain additional traction. A better approach is for the government to let the public engage in free speech without imposing labeling requirements that could be counterproductive.

Overall, the push toward protecting the public from exposure to election related deceptions generated by “synthetic media” through greater transparency is well meaning but unnecessary. For these reasons, we urge you to veto HB 2479 and SB 775.

Thank you for your time,

Chris McIsaac

Fellow, Governance

R Street Institute

cmcisaac@rstreet.org

CC:         Nicole Bunce Ogburn, Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Strategic Engagement, Office of Governor Glenn Youngkin

Lindsay Fisher, Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Policy and Legislative Affairs, Office of Governor Glenn Youngkin

                Josh Humphries, Director of Legislative Affairs, Office of Governor Glenn Youngkin