> Maybe they'll have to tour and meet people in person

That doesn't scale.

During campaign season, they're already running as many rallies as they can. Outside the campaign train, smaller Town Hall events only reach what, a couple hundred people, tops? And at best, they might change the minds of a couple dozen people.

EDIT: It's also worth mentioning that people generally don't seek to have their mind changed. Someone who is planning on voting for one candidate is extremely unlikely to go to a rally for the opposition.

Most members of the US congress and the current presidential administration, are already devoid of trust. I can't speak for other countries governments, but it seems to be a fairly common situation.

Yeah I'm just as annoyed with the AI slop that's coming out as anyone, but the next generation of voters won't believe a thing and so they will be pushed towards believing what they see in real life like campaigners who go door to door etc. It could be a great thing and would give meaning to he electoral system again ironically!

Honestly I can't see a solution beyond concentrating power to highly localized regions. Lots more mayors, city councils, etc. so there is a real chance you can meet someone who represents you.

I don't fully believe anything I see on the internet that isn't backed up by at least two independent sources. Even then, I've probably been tricked at least once.

It may come to that, where the federal power is less influential and there to mainly manage overall services of the nation etc, and then the local states let's say manage themselves, if I'm not wrong that was kind of the original idea of the great experiment. It doesn't sound inherently wrong untill you add tribalism into the mix where people are not working with eachother, but that seems to be the major push these days, at least that's the sentiment I get.

Would that change, maybe not, but maybe it would lessen the power grabs that some small few seem to gravitate towards.

I know if I wanted to influence the major elections, OpenAI, Google and Meta would be the first places I would go. That's a very small group of points of failure. Elections recently seem to be quite narrow, maybe they were before too though, but that kind of power is a silent soft power that really goes unchecked.

If people are more in tune with being mislead, that power can slowly degrade.