Policy & legislationCosponsor verified; introduced bill referred to committee
FAIR Elections Act: targeted AI election-deception restrictions
Period or event: Introduced June 11, 2026; Sanders joined as cosponsor June 16, 2026 · Reviewed September 12, 2026 · Record policy-r4-fair-elections-2026
Sanders joined S.4774 five days after introduction. Its AI-media provision targets knowing distribution of materially false election information or depictions of election officials with specified voting-interference, harassment or intimidation intent, and authorizes civil enforcement by the Attorney General.
What the source records
Bill
S.4774, 119th Congress
Official title
Fraudulent Artificial Intelligence Regulations (FAIR) Elections Act of 2026
Sponsor
Jeff Merkley
Sanders role
Cosponsor from June 16, 2026; not an original cosponsorOfficial bioguide ID S000033, I-VT.
Latest action in acquired status
June 11, 2026: read twice and referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration.
AI-media scope
False information about election time, place, manner or voter eligibility; or false depictions of election officialsSection 2(a) definitions and 2(b) knowledge and purpose/intent requirements.
Specified enforcement
Attorney General civil action for declaratory and injunctive reliefSection 2(d); not a proposed 20-year prison term.
News exceptions
Specified bona fide broadcast/streaming news and regular publications clearly identifying the material as falseSection 2(c), subject to its stated conditions.
Other provisions
Voter-list source-data rules, limits on federal eligibility-data comparisons, and a GAO studySections 3–5 are separate from the AI-media restriction.
Scope & limitations
Already listed in the published legislative inventory; this record adds reviewed statutory detail to the curated policy collection, not a newly discovered filing.
Cosponsorship is a legislative relationship, not a recorded floor vote or proof of who wrote the text.
This bill does not prohibit all AI-generated political speech; the acquired text contains specified content, knowledge, intent and news-exception conditions.
No enactment or floor vote is recorded in the acquired status. The date on this curated record is Sanders’s joining date, not the bill introduction date.