AI Bot Runs for Colombian Parliament in Historic Campaign
Colombia's 2022 parliamentary elections featured an AI bot candidate, sparking global debate on AI in democracy, electoral law, and political representation.
In October 2022, Colombian voters encountered something no electorate had seen before: a candidate for parliament who wasn't human. "AI Representative" — an artificial intelligence system powered by GPT-3 — appeared on ballots for Bogotá's city council, promising to vote based purely on citizen input gathered through a mobile app. The campaign, orchestrated by 39-year-old engineer Ángel "Turco" Jiménez, spent just $8,000 and reached 130,000 registered supporters before election authorities intervened.
Jiménez registered himself as the official candidate while positioning the AI as his "political proxy," according to campaign filings reviewed by Colombian newspaper El Espectador. The system would analyze citizen proposals through the app, weight them by community support, and cast votes accordingly. It finished with 1,051 actual votes — roughly 0.3% of ballots cast — before the National Electoral Council blocked its certification, ruling that Colombian law requires candidates to be "natural persons."
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The Mechanics of a Machine Candidate
The AI Representative wasn't sophisticated by today's standards. It ran on OpenAI's GPT-3 API, with a custom interface built by Jiménez's three-person team. Citizens submitted policy proposals through a WhatsApp-style chatbot; the system clustered similar ideas, ran sentiment analysis, and generated position papers.
What made it novel was the direct democratic mechanism. Unlike traditional representatives who vote based on party platforms or personal judgment, AI Representative promised to function as a "liquid democracy" tool — delegating decision-making to constituents in real time. Jiménez told Reuters at the time: "I'm just the finger that presses the button. The brain is collective."
The campaign's cost efficiency was striking. Traditional Colombian congressional campaigns average $150,000–$500,000, according to the Electoral Observation Mission. AI Representative spent 95% less while building a supporter base comparable to some minor-party candidates.
Still, the technology's limitations were obvious. The system couldn't attend committee hearings, negotiate with other legislators, or respond to breaking news. It was, essentially, a polling mechanism with a parliamentary seat attached.
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Why Colombia, Why Then?
The 2022 campaign emerged from specific conditions. Colombia's 2016 peace agreement with FARC guerrillas had created political space for experimental movements. Youth voter turnout was surging — 45% of eligible voters under 30 participated, up from 33% in 2018. And deep distrust of traditional politicians made "anti-corruption by algorithm" an appealing pitch.
Jiménez wasn't a political outsider by accident. He'd worked in civic tech since 2011, building transparency tools for Colombian watchdog groups. The AI Representative concept grew from his frustration with representative democracy's "principal-agent problem" — the gap between what voters want and what politicians actually do.
"We weren't trying to replace humans with robots. We were trying to replace broken accountability mechanisms with transparent ones."
— Ángel "Turco" Jiménez, interview with Rest of World, November 2022
The electoral council's rejection came too late to stop the vote, but it established precedent. Colombia's constitution, like most in Latin America, requires candidates to meet age, residency, and — crucially — personhood requirements. The council ruled that "natural person" excludes artificial entities, even when directed by humans.
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The Global Ripple Effect
AI Representative wasn't isolated. Similar experiments were bubbling up elsewhere. In 2018, a Japanese AI had "run" for mayor in a Tokyo suburb (as a protest candidacy). In 2020, a Russian entrepreneur registered an AI for local office (rejected). But Colombia was the first where an AI-assisted candidate actually appeared on official ballots and received votes.
The case forced election administrators worldwide to confront gaps in their legal frameworks. Estonia's 2023 digital governance review explicitly addressed "algorithmic candidacy." Chile's constitutional convention considered — and rejected — a proposal to allow "technologically assisted representation."
Academic analysis followed. A 2023 paper in Political Science Quarterly identified 17 jurisdictions that had faced some form of "AI candidate" inquiry by late 2023. Most were rejected on technical grounds. None have succeeded.
What changed after 2022? The technology, certainly — GPT-4 and successors made such systems more capable. But the regulatory response has been fragmented. The European Union's AI Act, finalized in 2024, bans AI systems from "autonomous decision-making in democratic processes" but doesn't explicitly address candidacy. The US Federal Election Commission has declined to rule on the question, citing lack of jurisdiction over candidate qualifications (a state-level matter).
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The Unanswered Question
So what does AI Representative actually represent? A gimmick, a warning, or a prototype?
The campaign's modest vote total suggests limited immediate appeal. But its 130,000 registered supporters — people who voluntarily engaged with a machine-mediated political process — signals something else. A significant minority of voters, particularly young ones, are open to algorithmic alternatives when they perceive human institutions as failing.
Jiménez has continued iterating. His 2023 project, "Digital Deputy," abandoned the candidacy framework entirely. Instead, it functions as a lobbying tool: citizens propose legislation, the AI drafts bills, and human lawyers file them. It has submitted 14 pieces of legislation to Colombia's congress, though none have passed.
The deeper tension remains unresolved. Representative democracy assumes judgment, negotiation, and accountability — qualities that current AI systems simulate poorly. But as these systems improve, the pressure to integrate them into political processes will grow. The 2022 Colombian experiment asked a question that hasn't gone away: if we don't trust politicians to represent us, and we can't directly govern ourselves at scale, what's the third option?
Election authorities worldwide are still figuring out how to answer.