README.md

---
license: cc-by-4.0
language:
  - en
pretty_name: AI, Elections and Agency Transfer Evidence Index
tags:
  - elections
  - political-disinformation
  - generative-ai
  - deepfakes
  - agency-transfer
  - evidence-index
configs:
  - config_name: research_view
    default: true
    data_files: [{split: data, path: parquet/research_view.parquet}]
---

# AI, Elections and Agency Transfer Evidence Index

**Version 0.4.0 · released 15 August 2026 · research cutoff 12 August 2026**

**Viewer hotfix on `main`, 15 August 2026:** Data Studio now exposes one orientation view. The frozen `v0.4.0` tag, its 26 tables, ZIP, workbook and checksums are unchanged.

This is a **purposive, exploratory evidence index**. It makes claims, sources, counterevidence, uncertainty, mechanisms, and selected measurements easier to inspect. It does **not** empirically prove the agency-transfer hypothesis, estimate how common election manipulation is, or identify votes or election outcomes caused by AI.

The repository slug is inherited. The canonical title is the one above: the index also contains preparedness files, boundary comparisons, screening leads, official electoral context, and empirical model studies. Inclusion is not a finding that every record is manipulative or harmful.

## Start here

- [Open the 10-row research view](https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/viewer/research_view/data) — fastest orientation.
- [Read the Spanish quick guide](https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/blob/main/docs/guia-rapida-es.md) — concise interpretation guide.
- [Read the methodology](https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/blob/main/docs/methodology.md) — units, coding and limitations.
- [Read the v0.4.0 red-team report](https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/blob/main/docs/red-team-v0.4.0.md) — findings, fixes and residual limits.
- [Inspect the claim–evidence table](https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/blob/v0.4.0/data/claim_evidence.csv) — trace claims to source records.
- [Download the complete v0.4.0 package](https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/resolve/v0.4.0/release/agency-transfer-election-cases-v0.4.0.zip?download=true) — CSV, Parquet, documentation, ledgers, scripts and workbook.
- [Download the v0.4.0 Excel workbook](https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/resolve/v0.4.0/release/agency-transfer-election-evidence-index-v0.4.0.xlsx?download=true) — navigation and QA convenience artifact.
- [Verify release checksums](https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/blob/v0.4.0/release/SHA256SUMS) — hashes for the frozen ZIP and workbook.
- [Browse the Agency Transfer collection](https://huggingface.co/collections/apol/agency-transfer) — related research datasets.
- [See citation metadata](https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/blob/main/CITATION.cff) — cite this index and the original sources.

The coded tables and field values are in English. Spanish is limited to the quick guide and selected descriptive metadata; this is not a bilingual corpus.

## What is in v0.4.0

These counts describe the generated v0.4.0 build and must be refreshed if that build changes.

| Layer | Rows | What the count means |
|---|---:|---|
| Claim-coded records | 10 | Mixed units: 2 election-wide files, 2 networks, 3 incidents, 1 campaign set and 2 preparedness files |
| Incident-count eligible | 8 | Excludes preparedness; it is not a prevalence denominator |
| Atomic claims | 100 | Occurrence, attribution, mechanism, reach, effects, response and inference remain separate |
| Claim–evidence relations | 124 | `supports`, `premise` or `counterevidence` links, not 124 independent findings |
| Sources linked to claims | 56 | Distinct source records used by `claim_evidence` |
| Source records overall | 70 | Also includes records used elsewhere in the corpus |
| Screening leads | 47 | Research queue; not included incidents |
| Empirical model studies | 7 | Laboratory/audit evidence; not real-world deployments |
| Pathway assessments | 10 | Researcher-coded analytic syntheses, not measured outcomes |
| Typed observations | 22 | Selected quantities with unit, denominator, window, method and causal status |
| Official data sources | 31 | Separate electoral and administrative provenance layer |

The strongest pathway conclusion is deliberately limited: 4 records show an observed control mechanism, 2 show an observed attempted transfer, 2 remain insufficient, and 2 are preparedness records rather than incidents. **No record codes observed agency change or observed agency preservation/extension.** These categories describe evidence ceilings, not severity scores.

## The 26 tables

| Use | Table names |
|---|---|
| Orient and scope | `research_view`, `case_catalog`, `coverage_summary`, `sampling_frame` |
| Claims and evidence | `cases`, `claims`, `sources`, `claim_evidence`, `analytic_record_claims` |
| Mechanisms and provenance | `pathways`, `observations`, `events`, `case_sources`, `case_actors`, `technology_uses`, `content_items` |
| Election relations and context | `case_elections`, `election_sources`, `official_elections`, `official_election_metrics`, `official_turnout`, `official_results`, `official_data_sources` |
| Discovery | `candidates`, `watchlist` |
| Empirical capability evidence | `model_evaluations` |

All 26 canonical tables are available as CSV in [`data/`](https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/tree/v0.4.0/data) and as native Parquet in [`parquet/`](https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/tree/v0.4.0/parquet). Relational types, keys and foreign keys are declared in [`data/datapackage.json`](https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/blob/v0.4.0/data/datapackage.json).

Only `research_view` is declared as an interactive Data Studio configuration. This keeps the public preview small and avoids conversion-lock contention among 26 unrelated schemas. It does not remove or merge any table; load the other 25 directly from their CSV or Parquet files.

Files under `research/` are transparent build inputs and historical working ledgers, not canonical v0.4.0 tables. Some retain superseded draft annotations; see [`research/README.md`](https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/blob/main/research/README.md) before using them.

## Load the data

### Hugging Face Datasets

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

view = load_dataset(
    "apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases",
    "research_view",
    revision="v0.4.0",
    split="data",
)
```

To load any of the 26 tables directly, replace `claim_evidence` with a table name from the map above:

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

table = "claim_evidence"
url = f"https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/resolve/v0.4.0/parquet/{table}.parquet"
records = load_dataset("parquet", data_files={"data": url}, split="data")
```

### pandas

```python
import pandas as pd

url = "https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/resolve/v0.4.0/parquet/research_view.parquet"
view = pd.read_parquet(url)
```

### Polars

```python
import polars as pl

url = "https://huggingface.co/datasets/apol/ai-election-manipulation-cases/resolve/v0.4.0/parquet/research_view.parquet"
view = pl.read_parquet(url)
```

Remove the pinned revision only if you deliberately want the mutable latest version.

## Read the evidence correctly

Each pathway keeps these fields separate: capability, controller, influence vector, target, affected agency, **hypothesized** control shift, possible power recipient, potential harm, and observed outcome. Their presence in one row does not imply that one caused the next.

`pathways` makes that reasoning inspectable. It does not establish that every link occurred, and it does not produce a validated agency-transfer score. In particular:

- `strong_inference` is a researcher inference, not a directly observed effect;
- platform reach is not belief, behaviour, turnout or vote choice;
- an institutional response is not proof of behavioural or electoral harm;
- official election results are context, not causal evidence;
- transparent, authorised, defensive and preparedness uses are not automatically manipulation.

Legacy numeric confidence fields were removed because they were neither calibrated probabilities nor intercoder-reliability estimates. This release has one primary coder and reports no intercoder-reliability statistic.

## Evidence provenance

Use normalized joins for factual work:

```text
claims.case_id                 → cases.case_id
claim_evidence.claim_id        → claims.claim_id
claim_evidence.source_id       → sources.source_id
observations.claim_id          → claims.claim_id
pathways.case_id               → cases.case_id
case_elections.election_id     → official_elections.election_id
election_sources.official_source_id → official_data_sources.official_source_id
```

The index retains public URLs but does not redistribute source snapshots. Of 124 claim–source relations, 57 have a verified pinpoint covering the full claim, 47 have a verified pinpoint covering only a factual premise or part of the claim, and 20 remain `not_verified` because the cited object was inaccessible during the locator audit. `locator_coverage` preserves that distinction and `locator_note` explains every unresolved pinpoint; a nonblank pinpoint is not a frozen source object, and a partial locator must not be treated as support for the whole claim. All archive and content-hash fields remain unresolved preservation gaps. Cite and inspect the underlying source before relying on a substantive claim.

## What the audit does—and does not do

The automated audit is **internal structural and semantic QA**. It checks declared files, identifiers, relations, enums, date formats, selected consistency rules and recorded hashes within its stated scope. It does not establish that a source is still live, that a source supports every word of a claim, that an allegation is true, that the sample is representative, or that a causal interpretation is valid.

The v0.4 auditor retains the historical filename `scripts/audit-v03.mjs` and compatibility output `data/audit-v03.json`; its internal auditor identifier is `audit-v04`, and `data/audit.json` is byte-identical. The old entry point `scripts/audit-data.mjs` is a read-only wrapper.

Six visible warnings record regional frames without systematic negative/null searches. They are a reason not to infer prevalence, not evidence that no cases exist in those regions.

## Appropriate use

Use this index for evidence tracing, comparative case research, hypothesis generation, institutional-response analysis, source discovery, measurement reconciliation and bounded model-study comparison.

Do not use it as:

- proof of the agency-transfer thesis;
- a global or regional incident count or prevalence estimate;
- a causal estimate of votes, turnout, seats or winners changed;
- a list of proven malicious AI incidents;
- evidence that visible or authorised political AI is inherently manipulative;
- operational material for voter targeting, impersonation, deception or safeguard evasion.

## Builds, releases and citation

The supported tabular pipeline is:

```bash
npm ci
npm run build:data
npm run build:audit
npm run build:parquet
npm run validate
npm run test:hardening
```

After the externally generated workbook is frozen in `release/`, maintainers run:

```bash
npm run build:package
npm run verify:package:checkout
npm run build:release-manifest
npm run validate
```

`npm run verify:package` verifies the frozen ZIP internally against its embedded manifest and checksums. Use `npm run verify:package:checkout` only while cutting a release to additionally require byte-for-byte parity with the current checkout; later documentation-only changes on mutable `main` do not rewrite an existing release.

Do not run `build:package` to overwrite an already tagged version from mutable `main`; bump the version and cut a new tag first.

`npm run audit:links` is a separate, time-dependent network check; it is not evidence that a blocked or rate-limited page is absent. Within the declared runtime and inputs, the deterministic scripts rebuild and check the tabular and packaged artifacts they cover. That remains narrower than end-to-end source reproducibility: external pages are not frozen, 47 pinpoints cover only a factual premise or part of their claim, 20 relations have no verified pinpoint, and automated QA does not validate source truth.

The Excel workbook is a convenience artifact, not the canonical analytic source. Its builder requires the `@oai/artifact-tool` runtime, which is not part of the public `package.json`; use CSV or Parquet unless that environment is available. The ZIP and workbook should be verified against the release manifest, not assumed equivalent merely because their filenames contain the same version.

`main` is mutable. Use the `v0.4.0` revision for a fixed citation and record the exact commit hash used. No DOI has been assigned; none should be inferred from the repository URL. A DOI can be added only after a frozen revision is deposited and its identity is reconciled with the tag, citation metadata and release manifest.

The CC BY 4.0 license covers the original coding and synthesis. Source materials remain under their publishers' or issuing institutions' terms. Cite both this index and the original evidence sources for substantive claims.