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CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Secretary of State Chuck Gray has denied an AI chatbot from being listed on ballots as a U.S. Senate candidate this November. The bot, called VIC by the Cheyenne resident who promised to use it to make policy decisions, is the very same that appeared in the running for mayor of Cheyenne in 2024 and was ultimately excluded from the final list of candidates.
The man behind the machine is a Cheyenne resident and library employee named Victor Miller. In an interview with Cap City News in 2024, when he and his chatbot first ran for mayor, Miller said that he had been tinkering with AI when he entered a frustrating minor legal dispute with the city. He said he then had a revelation: A chatbot trained on legal matters could interpret the laws of a city and perform important executive functions.
He told Cheyenne residents at a “Politics in the Park” event — during which mayoral candidates could directly speak to constituents and answer their questions — that he would refer to VIC for any questions or issues the city came across.
“I’d run it past VIC, see what he had to say,” Miller said. “It’d be a data-driven type of a situation. The more data, the better.”
Miller’s mayoral candidate profile from 2024, which relied on submitted information to explain each candidate’s platform, referred to his policy ideas as “ours.”
“We believe in using data-driven decision-making to bring innovative solutions to Cheyenne’s challenges, ensuring a prosperous and sustainable future for all residents,” Miller wrote.
But VIC, which stands for Virtual Integrated Citizen, couldn’t run for mayor. Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee ultimately kept VIC off the November 2024 ballot because only registered voters can run for office. Miller’s original workaround — listing VIC as his own nickname — was rejected.
Miller, who himself is a registered voter and was therefore eligible for office, was still permitted to run. Ultimately, incumbent Patrick Collins was chosen by the city to serve a second term as Cheyenne mayor.
Miller and VIC file to run for Senate
During the 2026 election, Miller has run into a similar problem. According to a Wyoming Secretary of State Office release, Miller used the same workaround to file for candidacy for U.S. Senate. This time, however, his application put him in direct conflict with Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who has spent years emphasizing the importance of election integrity.
Miller’s filing was rejected outright this time. According to the release from the Secretary of State Office, Miller failed to comply with state ballot name requirements.
“Both state and federal law are clear: to be a candidate for office, you must be a human being, NOT an AI bot,” Gray said in the release. “I won’t tolerate a mockery of our electoral system and will NOT allow our electoral system to be taken advantage of by AI. Our office is committed to upholding the law and that is why I denied the application that was made with our office.”
Miller filed a subsequent motion requesting a restraining order against Gray, challenging the rejection. According to Gray, that motion was rejected by Wyoming’s U.S. District Court.
That doesn’t necessarily mark the end of Miller’s campaign. Miller could always refile under his own name and without mention of VIC in his filing paperwork. Like 2024, he could run as himself and still employ VIC as his decision-maker.
He’d still be treading dangerous legal waters if he continued to market VIC as a policy tool, however. In addition to VIC being removed from Miller’s 2024 candidacy filing, its original version was also determined by OpenAI, the chatbot’s developer, to be in violation of the company’s usage policies.
“We recently removed a developer account that was knowingly violating our API usage policies, which disallow political campaigning or impersonating an individual without consent,” an OpenAI representative told Cap City News in 2024.
It was unclear from the Secretary of State Office release if Miller was still using OpenAI’s tools for his 2026 run. Miller told Cap City News in 2024 that he believed there was a tool he could employ from the open-source world of AI development.
“RIP V-I-C. But I assure you, I’m going to resurrect it again,” Miller had said.
For more information on the legal requirements to run for office in Wyoming, see the Secretary of State Office’s elections information web page.
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