Giving Politicians a Verified Voice in the Age of AI
Rootz provides the infrastructure that connects a politician’s own words to the AI systems voters use. Here’s what’s under the hood.
The Core Concept: Origin, Not Trust
Today, when AI answers a question about a politician, it trusts whatever sources it was trained on — news articles, Wikipedia, social media. The politician has no say.
With Rootz, the politician becomes the origin of their own information. They publish structured data, sign it cryptographically, and timestamp it on a blockchain. AI reads the origin. Media fact-checks it. Voters get informed.
The politician provides the origin. Media provides the analysis. AI provides the relay.
Component 1: .well-known/ai
What it is: A structured data file at a standard URL on the politician’s website.
Just like robots.txt tells search engines what to crawl, and sitemap.xml tells them what pages exist, .well-known/ai tells AI systems what the site owner wants them to know — in a format AI natively understands.
What it contains:
– Identity (name, office, party, district, contact)
– Policy positions (structured by topic, with legislation references)
– Achievements (concrete accomplishments with dates and amounts)
– Corrections (pre-loaded debunking of known false claims)
– Verification (proof of data origin)
Why it matters: AI processes structured JSON 42-190x more efficiently than raw HTML. Every token is signal. No noise.
Component 2: Signed Political Identity
What it is: A cryptographic keypair that proves data origin.
When a politician publishes structured data, they sign it with their private key. Anyone (or any AI) can verify the signature with the public key. This proves the data genuinely came from the candidate — not an impersonator, not a parody account, not a hostile actor.
How it works:
– The plugin generates a wallet (cryptographic keypair) during setup
– The public key is published in the structured data
– All position data is signed before publication
– AI systems can verify: “This data was actually published by Senator Smith’s verified identity”
Why it matters: Without verification, anyone could create a fake structured data file claiming to represent a politician. Signed identity prevents impersonation.
Component 3: Data Wallet
What it is: Encrypted, timestamped storage for position papers and policy documents.
Each policy position is stored as a signed, dated record. When a position changes, the new version is added — but the old version remains in the history. This creates a transparent, immutable timeline of the politician’s stated positions.
Why it matters:
– Anti-flip-flop: On-chain timestamps prove when a position was stated
– Transparency: Position evolution is visible and verifiable
– Accountability: If someone claims “Senator X used to support Y,” the timestamped record shows the truth
– “Truth has a timestamp”
Component 4: Corrections Field
What it is: A structured section specifically for debunking known false claims about the candidate.
Campaigns already maintain fact-check pages (we found AOC has one with 7 detailed corrections). But these pages are written for humans — AI doesn’t know to look for them. The corrections field puts debunking data exactly where AI can find it.
Structure:
Claim: "Representative X is worth $29 million"
Correction: "False. Financial disclosure shows $3,003-$45,000 in assets."
Source: Reuters fact-check
Fact-Checker: Reuters
Why it matters: In our experiment, the corrections field turned AI’s response to misinformation from “almost certainly false” (hedging, 85% confidence, no sources) to “this is false — debunked by Reuters, here are the actual numbers” (definitive, high confidence, named sources). The difference is a voter who leaves uncertain vs. a voter who leaves informed.
Component 5: On-Chain Verification
What it is: Position data hashed and recorded on blockchain (Polygon network).
A cryptographic hash of all published positions is periodically recorded on-chain. This creates an immutable timestamp — proof that these exact positions were published at this exact time. No one can retroactively alter the record.
Why it matters:
– Positions can’t be quietly changed without the history showing
– Third parties can independently verify the publication timeline
– Creates accountability infrastructure that no cloud service controls
Design Principles
Bipartisan by Design
The same tools and schema work for any party, any candidate, any position. We provide infrastructure, not editorial judgment. A Republican and a Democrat both benefit equally from having their positions accurately represented by AI.
Open Schema, Proprietary Implementation
The structured data format is an open standard — anyone can implement it. The tools that make it easy (plugin, generator, scanner, monitoring) are our product. We grow by making the format ubiquitous.
Sovereign Identity
The politician’s identity and data are not owned by Rootz, Twitter, Facebook, Google, or any platform. The cryptographic keys belong to the candidate. The data lives on their server. The blockchain record is public. No one can deplatform their verified identity.
Privacy-Respecting
We serve candidates, not surveillance. We don’t track voters. We don’t profile users. We provide infrastructure for transparent political communication.
For the Technical Audience
- Schema: JSON with defined fields for political identity, positions, achievements, corrections
- Signing: secp256k1 ECDSA (same as Ethereum)
- Chain: Polygon Mainnet (low cost, high availability)
- Plugin: WordPress 5.0+, PHP 7.4+, optional GMP extension for signing
- API: RESTful endpoints for scanner, generator, and monitoring
- Open Source: Schema specification is CC-BY-4.0
How This Relates to AI Platforms
Today’s AI platforms (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok) already crawl websites for information. They already process structured data when they find it. The .well-known/ai standard gives them a known location to find verified, structured political data — rather than scraping and guessing.
We’re not asking AI platforms to change. We’re putting the data where they already look, in a format they already understand, with verification they can check.