READ THE STATEMENT
Swing Left Feeds Doorstep Conversations to AI. Its Privacy Policy Doesn’t Mention Them.
(Campaigns can read the original notes, Swing Left says. In one House race, undecided voters go straight into the campaign’s texting program.)
By Ethan Ward · Oct. 22, 2026
Swing Left, a Democratic group that says it has 1 million members, is sending volunteers to talk with voters in the races that will decide control of Congress on Nov. 3. The program is called Ground Truth. After each conversation, the volunteer records what the voter said in an app, an AI model sorts the notes by topic, and Swing Left shares what it finds with campaigns and state parties. Swing Left described the program this way when it launched it last November.
THE STATEMENT · SWING LEFT · NOV. 17, 2025 · SWINGLEFT.ORG
Swing Left volunteers have started early—more than a year before the midterms, knocking on every door in swing districts, including those often left off traditional lists. (1. Swing Left has said the voters left off those lists are “disproportionately Black, Latino, and/or low-income.”)
They have deep, two-way conversations and capture what voters are saying using new technology Swing Left helped design. (2. Swing Left’s privacy policy, last updated Aug. 26, 2020, covers what people type into forms on its website. It doesn’t mention conversations at the door.)
Swing Left aggregates and shares those rich insights directly with campaigns and state parties, so they can speak to what voters are actually experiencing. (3. Since August, a deal with the Democratic National Committee has covered all the data from each conversation, The Washington Sun reported.)
Swing Left’s announcement of Ground Truth. The gray line marks where the page is cut between the headline and the passage.
SCREENSHOT: SWINGLEFT.ORG, NOV. 17, 2025
Our notes
Swing Left said in its July 2025 announcement that Democrats “ignore 1 in 4 potential voters, who are disproportionately Black, Latino, and/or low-income, because they’re unlisted or mislisted in the data Democrats rely on.” Reaching those voters is the point of the program, so theirs are many of the words going into it.
Alex Bond, 29, told two canvassers outside his home in York, Pa., that “A.I. is terrible,” The New York Times reported in June. One canvasser, a Swing Left volunteer, recapped what he said in a phone app, and an AI tool analyzed it with hundreds of other memos from the district. “Everything a person is saying is a data point,” said Violet Kopp, Swing Left’s organizing program manager for the East Coast, who was one of the canvassers.
Each conversation “is analyzed by an AI language model trained to classify what voters said against a fixed topic taxonomy,” Swing Left wrote in its report on the first three months of 2026. The same model “extracts named entities: the specific people, agencies, and organizations voters mentioned by name.”
In its Oct. 8 report, Swing Left says it gives campaigns “access to read the original notes.” In one House race, the campaign adds the undecided voters that volunteers identify “straight into its own texting program,” then follows up on the issue each voter raised. Volunteers had 41,334 conversations in 58 House and Senate races through Sept. 30. In September, they stopped knocking every door and began skipping voters “who will almost certainly vote Republican.”
In August, Swing Left, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Data Exchange, and the Association of State Democratic Committees agreed to share the data from each conversation with voters, all of it and right away, The Washington Sun reported. A 2024 Federal Election Commission advisory opinion made that kind of coordination possible for outside groups.
Volunteers record their notes in an app from Everybody Techworks. Its privacy policy says the groups that use it, not the company, decide how the information is used, and makes them responsible for telling people their rights.
State laws on AI in elections cover what campaigns publish, such as deepfake videos and unlabeled AI ads. Pennsylvania’s SB 1332, which would require notice of AI in political ads, has been in the Senate State Government Committee since May 21. We found no state law that requires a canvasser to tell a voter that notes from their conversation will be analyzed by AI.
Republican field programs collect voter data at the door, too. The i360 Grassroots app records each voter’s survey answers for the campaigns that use it.
What you can do
When a canvasser knocks before Nov. 3, ask whether they will write up the conversation, who will see the notes, and whether AI will read them. You can ask them not to record what you said.
Ask Swing Left to delete what it holds about you. Its privacy policy says to email [email protected] with the request.
Ask your state lawmakers whether your state’s election AI rules cover what canvassers collect. Open States finds them from your address.
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How we reported this
The statement is from Swing Left’s Nov. 17, 2025, press release launching Ground Truth. We also read Swing Left’s July 15, 2025, announcement, its Ground Truth reports for the first and third quarters of 2026, its privacy policy, and the Everybody Techworks privacy policy, all on Oct. 18; The New York Times, June 29, 2026; The Washington Sun, Aug. 3, 2026; the Federal Election Commission’s Advisory Opinion 2024-01; and the Pennsylvania General Assembly’s record for SB 1332.
We asked Swing Left for comment on Oct. 18. It didn’t answer by Oct. 21.
Rejected, suspended, or flagged for no reason? Tell me what happened.
The notice rarely says AI. It says “not selected” or “account suspended.” I read every tip myself.
