Why some Ontario voters are turning to AI chatbots for 2026 municipal elections

Eric Apps had an idea of who he might vote for in Toronto's municipal election, but the lawyer wanted another opinion before making his final choice.

In the Parkdale-High Park area, Apps could no longer choose his usual safe option, longtime city councillor Gord Perks. Perks, who is 63, had decided to retire. The race for the city's west-end ward had grown to include 10 candidates, and Apps did not know any of them.

He turned to a tool he already knew: Claude, an artificial intelligence chatbot made by Anthropic. Apps asked it to list the five leading candidates in his ward, based on polling, and explain their positions on issues such as bike lanes, housing and property taxes.

"It laid them all out in a very easily digestible format," he said.

Apps is not the only person using AI to find election information. During Quebec's provincial election earlier this month, an estimated 40 per cent of voters in the province used AI chatbots and received false or outdated election information, according to researchers at McGill University. Many Quebec news outlets do not let chatbots access their websites, which means their reports cannot be used to answer people's questions.

Experts say this is a worrying change in the democratic process. They are concerned that computer algorithms may replace people's involvement and judgment while providing information that could be false.

Apps said his own search had some gaps. The chatbot could not give him much information about candidates who received less news coverage or had little activity online. He also recognized that the way he worded his questions might have contributed to some of these gaps.

"The blind spots are probably in the eyes of the beholders," Apps said. "If you have your point of view going into it, then it probably is going to be giving back information that is not necessarily going to focus on opening your eyes."

Alissa Centivany, an associate professor of information and media studies at Western University, said AI chatbots have taken the place of traditional search engines such as Google and trusted news sources, including news organizations' websites.

For some voters, chatbots have become their main way of looking for information.

Centivany, who studies AI, said it is still unclear exactly how chatbots gather information from across the internet. She said the quality of the information they put together is often lower than she would like, especially during political elections.

One concern, she said, is that chatbots can mix together information from many sources, including posts made by users on social media sites such as Reddit. Researchers are beginning to find evidence that chatbots may put together answers based on what they think a user wants to hear, using the person's earlier questions, rather than focusing on objective facts.

"A lot of it is opinion, a lot of it is untrue, a lot of it is inflammatory," she said. "And it's being used as a source of information."

As Apps asked Claude more questions about the candidates in his ward, he kept its limits in mind, especially because so much content is posted on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.

"You have to take your AI engine with a grain of salt," he said. "It gave me the basic information and then it puts it back to the viewer."

Apps said the easy access to AI tools made it simpler for people to take part in politics. He considers himself somewhat aware of political issues, but said the chatbot helped refresh his knowledge.

"You ask it a question and it gives you an answer," he said. "It's not giving you glossy videos with clickbait-ish headlines."

Anthropic said Claude uses web searches to find current information and shows users its sources so they can "judge their credibility for themselves."

"Claude is trained to note when claims are disputed, when sources conflict, or when a source may be inaccurate or have an agenda," the company said in a statement to The Canadian Press.

Earlier this month, Anthropic announced updates to its rules for using Claude. These included a revised focus on elections and limits on political content.

"We've further sharpened our section on elections, focusing it specifically on disallowing the use of Claude to deceive voters or disrupt elections (for instance, by spreading false information about candidates or how to vote, impersonating candidates or election officials, or trying to suppress turnout)," the company's news release said.

Alex Marland, a professor of Canadian politics and the Jarislowsky Chair in Trust and Political Leadership at Acadia University, said it makes sense that voters would use an easy-to-access tool such as AI to learn about election candidates.

People often vote for the political party that best matches their views. But candidates in Ontario's municipal elections do not run as members of political parties.

"What ends up happening is you have to invest a lot more time to try to understand, 'What are my choices and what do these people stand for?'" Marland said.

Marland said it is a good sign that voters want to take part in local politics, especially because Ontario's last municipal election had a record-low voter turnout. According to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the average turnout in 2022 was almost 33 per cent, compared with about 38 per cent in 2018.

However, Marland said people must carefully check whether the information they receive is correct.

"This is a piece of information that is going in with other pieces of information."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 24, 2026.