During the 2026 midterm elections, GEIS’s VIOLETS (Voter Information from Official Local Election Trusted Sources) chatbot was deployed in the field. Led by Dr. Giovanni Ciampaglia, Dr. Cody Buntain, Dr. Patrick Wu, and PhD student Do Won Kim, VIOLETS answered questions about Maryland elections using only official local election sources. This deployment extended the team’s public demo at Maryland Day 2026 and their presentation at IC2S2 2026, and gave the team data to study how voters use conversational AI to find election information.
Link for more information: https://today.umd.edu/before-the-ballot-box-a-ballot-bot
