With the municipal elections now just days away, South Africans are bracing for a digital storm unlike any before. On 4 November, voters will go to the polls to elect local leaders who will oversee the basic services that shape everyday life, from water and electricity to housing and sanitation. But in the long run-up to that moment, a quieter battle has been unfolding online. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), together with the Government Communication and Information Systems (GCIS), hosted a virtual roundtable titled “Elections in the era of Artificial Intelligence” with the explicit aim of protecting…

Trusting the Process: How Wisconsin Grassroots Groups Are Fighting Election Anxiety In the quiet college town of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with Election Day hovering just one week away, an unmistakable tension hangs in the air. It’s the kind of unease that settles into dinner conversations, follows people into grocery store aisles, and keeps them scrolling through news feeds long after they should have put their phones down. But on a stage inside UW-Oshkosh, a group of unlikely allies gathered to push back against that gnawing anxiety with something surprisingly simple: conversation. WisACT, a cross-partisan network operating under the university’s Whitburn Center…