In case you haven’t heard, it is election year. And right now is a particularly important time in election year: our local primaries.

Primaries may lack the noise and overt consequence of the November general election, but make no mistake, they are important. Particularly here in Boulder, as the candidates who clinch the Democratic primary often chalk up resounding victories in November, meaning the real race is the one going on right now.

In other words, our local primary elections are vital.

That is why it is important to keep our guard up for democracy’s new boogeyman: misinformation.

Mis- and disinformation have been around for as long as there have been elections, but we are calling it “new” because the ubiquity of the internet and social media has allowed falsehoods and misleading information to permeate through the electorate like never before. In fact, we would go so far as to posit that you’ve knowingly encountered some fake or misleading information yourself recently — either that or you’ve been duped by it. It feels a radical and alarming thing to claim, but if you spend any time on social media, such as X or Nextdoor, you’ve undoubtedly confronted mis- or disinformation.

In 2024, this may seem like old news. We all remember 2016 and Russian trolls. But this year the game has changed thanks to artificial intelligence.

“If you thought those election cycles were bad when it came to misinformation and disinformation, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security, told CBS recently. “In 2024, deepfakes that are powered by AI are going to supercharge misinformation.”

Colorado, thankfully, has proactively sought to quell some chaos by passing a bill to require prominent disclosures in any campaign ad that uses AI to depict people.

Requiring a disclosure instead of outright banning the practice is a pragmatic approach. AI, after all, is here to stay, and finding ways to integrate it and regulate it rather than trying a total prohibition seems a smart move. What feels less smart is that the bill only calls for disclosures on ads that appear within 60 days before a primary or 90 days before a general election. Today, when elections appear to last more than a year, three months is a rather short window. Similarly disappointing is that the law won’t take effect until after Colorado’s primaries are over.

This is not to imply that we are worried AI deepfakes are going to show up in Boulder’s races, but rather to use this endeavor to address misinformation as a reminder that small local primaries that are conducted in good faith can still be the target of a bad actor.

And today, that’s all it takes: one bad actor. State-backed campaigns of misinformation may still be democracy’s most obvious threat, but with the power AI has given to individuals, it’s not hard to imagine one malicious person wreaking havoc in a local election.

According to one Associated Press report, this new paradigm “marks a quantum leap from a few years ago, when creating phony photos, videos or audio clips required teams of people with time, technical skill and money. Now, using free and low-cost generative artificial intelligence services from companies like Google and OpenAI, anyone can create high-quality ‘deepfakes’ with just a simple text prompt.”

So, while the state has taken a proactive step forward in the misinformation battle, the real onus is going to be on our community. Together we must vigilantly watch out for falsehoods and fake content, call out such content when we see it so others don’t fall prey to it, and our local media outlets, such as this paper, must continue supplying reliable and trustworthy information.

This approach to combating misinformation will require that we hold two conflicting truths in our minds at once: First, our elections are conducted with integrity and the results are valid. Voter fraud and irregularities are exceedingly rare, and despite the myriad challenges the 2020 election endured — and efforts to sow doubts that have proliferated since then — the results of our elections are legitimate.

And second, we must simultaneously approach our elections with caution because of the proliferation of mis- and disinformation.

Put another way, we must be diligent and engaged citizens of our democracy.

It is imperative that we instill trust in our democratic institutions, while also scrutinizing our news sources, social media posts and campaign mailers. Complacency here is our enemy. Place too much blind trust in the process, and today more than ever, you are likely to wind up falling prey to misinformation. Become too mistrustful of our processes and the very foundation of our democracy is likely to falter — what is democracy after all but a collective belief in a system?

To begin the arduous work of bridging our divides — and boy are we divided — we must find a way to restore the conception of a national reality based on a shared set of facts. This work begins locally and will require all of us — Republican, Democrat and everyone in between and beyond — to be informed and engaged with our democratic process.

In a perfect world, we would vote because we believed in something. Because a leader’s vision inspires us. Because we saw the potential of a ballot measure to better our community. In a perfect world, this is what our political machine would aspire to: to inspire us.

But instead, candidates and political parties and dark money groups and malicious individuals seem content to mislead us, misinform us and scare us. To claim the election is rigged. To demonize members of the LGBTQ population, immigrants and anyone who is seen as different. To rave about crime and the crisis at the southern border. To pin the blame for inflation and gas prices entirely upon political leaders. To generally stoke divisions and confusion and fear.

Fear, though, is no basis for a democracy. We must condemn efforts to polarize us. We must condemn lies and misinformation. And we must condemn the shameful attempts to sow mistrust in our democratic process.

Together, we have to hold on to hope. We have to champion candidates who share our values. We have to vote for the future we desire for our community. And we have to do this with faith in our democratic system — and a reasonable amount of skepticism toward the information we encounter online.

Ballots for our local primaries have been mailed. Primary election day is June 25. Go vote and make your voice heard.

Gary Garrison for the Editorial Board