ChatGPT provided Democracy Works info to voters more than 16 million times this cycle

OpenAI’s ChatGPT gave users Election Day and voting information more than 16 million times this midterm cycle through a partnership with the nonprofit Democracy Works.

As of Tuesday afternoon, OpenAI reported that ChatGPT pulled more than 16.5 million times from Democracy Works, a nonprofit that partners with technology firms to provide real-time, accurate information about Election Day. This includes information on registration deadlines, ID requirements and voting locations.

The estimate, first reported by The Hill, is expected to climb as Election Day continues Tuesday. It does not include queries about certain races, candidates or election issues, or voters asking for guidance on ballot decisions.

With the increased use of AI since the last election, AI firms are under pressure to ensure their products are feeding out accurate information to voters.

Democracy Works, a nonpartisan organization based in Brooklyn, N.Y., builds voting tools and offers data sets compiling information and voting guidance from across the country.

Under the partnership, Democracy Works offers an application programming interface (API) that features data from federal, state, county, municipal, submunicipal and school board elections for jurisdictions of more than 5,000 people.

The 2026 midterms mark the first time OpenAI has partnered with Democracy Works, which also has similar agreements with Anthropic and Google.

When a user of ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini asks for logistical, nonbiased information about Election Day, the models are likely pulling from the Democracy Works API.

Describing the partnership in a briefing last month, OpenAI’s head of civic and strategic risk, Josh Lawson, said it provides a “data freshness layer” that “enhances what we’re able to offer to people.”

“Democracy Works works with state and local election offices to compile kind of the reliable corpus of information from those offices, as well as links to those downstream elections office sites around voting locations, deadlines, voting methods that are allowed in a particular place,” Lawson said, adding the nonprofit also monitors changes and updates made throughout the election period.

The partnership has significantly changed voters’ experience since 2024, Lawson added, stating the model used to refuse to answer or lead to a website that required multiple clicks for the answer.