States Are Building a Patchwork of Laws to Regulate Election Deepfakes

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Artificial intelligence (AI) can make a candidate appear to say something the candidate never said. States are answering these fakes, often called deepfakes, with rules that can require a warning label, let a candidate sue or expose the sender to criminal penalties. The hard part is drawing a boundary between deceiving voters and making a political joke, while giving senders a rule they can understand.

A convincing fake is only the start of the legal question

The National Conference of State Legislatures counted 31 states with enacted laws regulating deepfakes in political messaging in its inventory updated October 9, 2026. That number describes legislation, not a nationwide ban or a guarantee that every provision can be enforced. The inventory divides those laws into prohibitions and disclosure requirements, including year-round restrictions in Maryland and election-related restrictions in Minnesota and Texas.

Washington’s law covers “synthetic media”: an image, audio recording or video intentionally manipulated with digital technology to create a realistic but false depiction of something a real person did not do or say, leaving a fundamentally different impression from the original. Minnesota’s definition likewise asks whether a reasonable person would believe the depicted speech or conduct actually happened, and it covers fakes produced by technical means, not a person physically or verbally impersonating someone. In both definitions, the target is a false appearance of authenticity, not the mere use of editing technology.

The same message can face different state rules

A label requirement, a lawsuit and a criminal offense impose different burdens on the sender.

These are selected examples, and California’s text must also be read alongside the court history below.

California’s governor approved Assembly Bill 502 on September 19, 2026, amending section 20012 of the state Elections Code with immediate effect. Descriptions of that provision’s election window and parody exception written before that date may be out of date.

California’s section 20012 defines malice as knowing the deceptive content was false or acting with reckless disregard for the truth. Here, malice concerns the sender’s relationship to the truth, rather than ordinary personal hostility. Materiality asks whether the deception matters to voting decisions or confidence in the election process or result.

What a disclosure must actually do

Washington provides a defense when the message carries the disclosure “This (image/video/audio) has been manipulated,” presented in the format the statute requires. A defense gives a sender an answer to a claim under that statute; it does not eliminate every possible legal claim about the message.

For visual media, Washington requires easily readable text no smaller than the largest other text, and a video must show the disclosure for its entire duration. For audio alone, the disclosure must be clearly spoken at the beginning and end, and at intervals no longer than two minutes if the recording exceeds two minutes.

Minnesota’s statute does not make an AI label a defense. Under its definition, the question is whether a reasonable person would believe the depicted speech or conduct happened. Separately, the prohibition excludes federally required broadcasts of candidate-produced deepfakes.

California’s amended section 20012 exempts content a reasonable person would understand as satire or parody. It also exempts content carrying a disclosure that it “has been manipulated for purposes of satire or parody,” or similar words, when the disclosure meets the requirements the statute sets for it.

Washington excludes qualifying news, features, commentary and editorials in regularly scheduled news media not controlled by a candidate or a political or incidental committee. A political committee expects to receive contributions or spend money supporting or opposing candidates or ballot measures, with exceptions for candidates and individuals using their own funds. An incidental committee is a nonprofit outside that political-committee definition that may make contributions or expenditures above the statutory reporting thresholds, excluding nonprofits merely passing through payments they need not report. California’s exception for qualifying news broadcasts and commentary requires clearly acknowledging that the deceptive material does not accurately represent a real event or speech.

Washington generally places liability on the sponsor. For electioneering communications, the sponsor is the person paying for the message; if someone acts as an agent or is reimbursed, the original source of payment is the sponsor. But the medium that disseminates a message can become liable for removing a disclosure or changing the content into synthetic media, subject to specified defenses and an exception for candidate broadcasts that federal law requires.

Enforcement can mean removal, damages or punishment

In Washington, the depicted candidate can seek a court order prohibiting publication or sue the sponsor for general or special damages, and the court may award a prevailing party attorney’s fees and costs. The Washington plaintiff must establish use of synthetic media by clear and convincing evidence, and the statute encourages courts to act expediently. Washington appellate courts say clear and convincing evidence shows the disputed fact to be highly probable.

The Washington Public Disclosure Commission explained in May 2024 that it would not investigate complaints under this synthetic-media law, which is enforced through a candidate’s own civil lawsuit against the sponsor.

Minnesota allows its attorney general, county or city attorneys, the depicted individual, and an injured or likely injured candidate to seek injunctions against a violation underway or reasonably believed imminent. Minnesota’s ordinary penalty is up to 90 days in jail, a $1,000 fine or both. An offense within five years of a prior conviction under this statute can bring up to five years and $10,000, while intent to cause violence or bodily harm carries up to 364 days and $3,000. A convicted Minnesota state or local candidate forfeits the nomination or office, and a convicted candidate or other individual is disqualified from appointment to that office or another office whose qualifications the legislature may establish under the state constitution.

Texas classifies its election deepfake-video offense as a Class A misdemeanor, a criminal offense.

A robocall shows why the channel matters

Before New Hampshire’s 2024 presidential primary, thousands of homes received a robocall using a voice resembling President Joe Biden’s and urging recipients to skip the primary and save their vote for November, New Hampshire Public Radio reported.

The federal penalty that followed rested on a telephone law about caller identification, not on a deepfake law. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) determined that Steve Kramer, a political operative, was responsible for the calls and knowingly caused them to be sent with misleading caller identification, intending to defraud and cause harm, in violation of the Truth in Caller ID Act. The FCC imposed a $6 million forfeiture, its term for a fine, on September 30, 2024 for that caller-ID violation. The FCC’s 2025 report says it refers unpaid forfeitures to the Justice Department for enforcement and referred Kramer’s order on December 3, 2024.

New Hampshire Public Radio reported on June 13, 2025 that a Belknap County Superior Court jury had acquitted Kramer on all charges in the consolidated trial: eleven felony counts of voter suppression and eleven counts of impersonating a political candidate. The FCC finding and the criminal acquittal came in different proceedings addressing different questions: misleading caller identification under federal law, and voter suppression and candidate impersonation under state law.

Protecting elections also raises speech questions

When signing California’s earlier measures in September 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom argued that election integrity and public trust required protection against AI disinformation. The Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute sued on behalf of video creator Christopher Kohls in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, challenging two 2024 California laws: AB 2839, the earlier election-communication law, and AB 2655, which is aimed at online platforms. AB 2839 added Elections Code section 20012 in 2024; AB 502 amended that same section in 2026. In that case, Kohls v. Bonta, the institute describes a video Kohls posted on July 26, 2024, lampooning Vice President Kamala Harris in an imitation of her voice, as a labeled parody. It argues that AB 2839’s oversized disclaimer requirement and vague standards chilled political satire.

The federal district court found AB 2839 unconstitutional, concluding that its required disclaimer would take up an entire screen in many instances and that a mandatory disclaimer for parody or satire “would kill the joke.” On August 29, 2025, that court permanently barred California officials from enforcing AB 2839 against the named plaintiffs. The injunction protects only those plaintiffs, and the ruling addressed the law’s earlier text, so “California’s deepfake law is banned” is not an adequate description of where things stand.

On August 20, 2025, the same court barred enforcement of AB 2655 against X Corp. and Rumble because federal Section 230 protections for online services displaced that state platform law. An August 28, 2025 stipulated order extended California’s agreement not to enforce AB 2655 to all providers of interactive computer services, subject to termination if an appellate court vacates the judgment.

In the findings of AB 502, the amendment approved in September 2026, the legislature argues that voters focus on elections in the weeks before an election and that disinformation may not be corrected before they cast their votes. The California legislature argues that limited election periods and labels identifying inauthentic media narrowly target voter deception. The constitutional question is whether the actual restrictions stay within that stated purpose without unnecessarily burdening political expression. AB 502 changed the statute after the 2025 judgment, leaving two separate questions to check: what the amended text says and what the court’s order covers.

Kohls v. Ellison is the federal constitutional challenge to Minnesota’s election-deepfake statute brought by the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and Upper Midwest Law Center. On February 9, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld the district court’s refusal to temporarily block enforcement. The Eighth Circuit left the district court free to consider later whether Kohls has standing, meaning the right to sue, and if so whether he is entitled to relief on the merits. It said the district court may also decide whether a second plaintiff is entitled to a permanent injunction. That is not a final decision that every application of Minnesota’s law is constitutional.

The Eighth Circuit denied requests to rehear the case on March 31, 2026, and returned the record to the district court on April 20. The district court lifted the pause in Kohls v. Ellison on July 8, 2026. X Corp. operates the social network X. The pause in X Corp.’s separate challenge was lifted on August 13, 2026; X filed an amended complaint on August 26, and Minnesota’s attorney general moved to dismiss it on September 18. On September 21, the court canceled X’s pretrial conference while that dismissal motion was pending.

Federal rules reach particular conduct

In a ruling released February 8, 2024, the FCC confirmed that AI-generated human voices fall within existing Telephone Consumer Protection Act restrictions on artificial or prerecorded voices. Calls using them require prior express consent unless there is an emergency purpose or an exemption. The ruling applies an existing telephone framework to a new way of making a voice; it does not create a rule for every fake campaign image or online video.

The federal rules exempt noncommercial calls to residential lines, up to three calls in a consecutive 30-day period, when the required opt-outs are honored. Consent requirements and exceptions have to be checked for the kind of number called, rather than assuming all political AI calls are treated alike.

The FCC also proposes tighter telephone-provider filings and screening in its Robocall Mitigation Database, part of its framework for preventing illegal calls. The FCC’s September 9, 2026 notice set October 9, 2026, as the deadline for comments and November 9, 2026, for reply comments.

Federal election law prohibits a candidate or agent from falsely purporting to act for another candidate or political party in a damaging way, and separately prohibits anyone from fraudulent impersonation to solicit contributions. On September 19, 2024, the Federal Election Commission declined to open an AI-campaign-ad rulemaking and instead adopted an interpretation explaining that these fraud rules apply regardless of technology. The federal layer therefore targets specified conduct, such as deceptive caller identification or campaign impersonation, rather than supplying one answer to every misleading election message.

Labels are measurable, but effectiveness is a different question

The Wesleyan Media Project reported on September 4, 2026 that it had identified at least 164 AI-generated or AI-enhanced political ads. Of the ads it identified, 69 percent lacked a disclaimer disclosing AI use. That shows labels were far from universal in those ads; it does not show that any unlabeled ad violated a law.

In a January 2025 review of the 2024 election, Chris McIsaac of the R Street Institute found the effects of state AI-content restrictions unclear: he reported little evidence of deterrence and no clear evidence that unlabeled deepfakes were less likely in states with restrictions.

A prevalence count does not measure whether a particular statute reduced voter deception or changed an election outcome. The existence of a penalty likewise shows that an enforcement tool was used, not that it prevented the original message from reaching voters.

Start with the rule and the official voting information

The National Association of Secretaries of State’s January 2026 TrustedInfo initiative directs the public to state and local election officials for reliable election information. Check voting instructions with those officials, especially if an apparently familiar voice announces a changed location or tells voters to stay home.

Report an unwanted robocall through the FCC Consumer Complaint Center. The FCC’s imposter-call guide directs users to the “Phone” form and “Unwanted Calls/Texts” issue, and asks for the displayed caller-ID number, the number called, the call time and time zone, and any recording or screenshot.

For the legal question, check the current statute and any court order affecting the provision. A campaign or voter weighing a complaint should first identify the depicted person, the medium, the election period, the required intent and any applicable disclosure or exception.