Polling places: empty-room plates; disclosure is a glossary term, not a crowd

Civic architecture of the empty room. Overlay hours. Synthetic-media-disclosure is a label, not a grant to invent voters. Check the clip before you publish.

A polling-place clip that informs is a facility plate: empty gym, stacked chairs, booths closed or generic, the entrance a neighbour would recognise. It is not a constructed line of voters. Photograph the empty room. Burn the hours the clerk already publishes. Leave the census off the generate.

The empty room is the civic plate

Civic architecture is the product. Text-to-video of “Americans voting in a sunny gym at golden hour” is a set from a different ZIP code, plus extras you did not cast.

Photograph the real room: same lens height a voter would see, not a drone inventing a plaza the site does not have. Approve that jpeg — window count, floor tape, the flag that is actually flying, no ballots in frame, no names on a poll book. Then animate.

City accounts: the building still is public; residents are not extras is the same job at city-hall scale: I2V the elevation you own, leave invented citizens off the steps. A polling place is a civic room on a specific day. Do not populate it because “elections have people.”

Fire stations: the empty bay still, no generated firefighters as extras is the apparatus version. Same rule, different plate. Empty bay, empty gym. Staff and the public are not extras.

Prompt only the camera: a slow push down the empty aisle, no new furniture, no one entering frame. Re-describing “busy polling site at 7 a.m.” is how bodies appear.

If the still includes a real person — a poll worker, a voter, a child — crop them or reshoot. Background is not a likeness carve-out. Minors in a gym photo are a hard stop.

Overlay hours. Disclosure is a glossary term.

Hours and the location string are copy the election office already posted: “Open 7 a.m.–8 p.m.” “Accessible entrance on Pine.” Write that string. Do not ask a model to letter it onto a banner.

Add a text overlay burns one authored line, whole clip, top / center / bottom. It does not transcribe. It does not listen. Hours, then the URL, then “bring photo ID if your state requires it” — if you need a sequence, that is timed overlays, timestamps you set. Neither job belongs in the generate prompt.

Synthetic media disclosure is the obligation to identify AI-generated or altered content as such — increasingly law, not a platform preference, with the EU AI Act’s Article 50 as the clearest current example. It is a label. It is not a grant to invent voters. Labelling the file “AI-generated” tells a viewer the media is synthetic. It does not create consent from private people the model drew, and it does not make a photoreal crowd in a gym into civic b-roll.

A platform AI-content toggle is that platform’s policy. Article 50 is law for realistic synthetic content reaching an EU audience. Neither instrument is permission to populate a precinct. Put the disclosure on the empty-room plate you actually made.

A deepfake of a private person is not a style. A labelled synthetic clip of an unnamed voter, a “generic family at the booth,” or a poll-worker headshot used as a talking-twin seed is already over that line. Calling it get-out-the-vote aesthetic does not move a platform.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Check the clip before you publish

Check a video before you publish it is the last credit, not a substitute for picking a take. analyze_video extracts frames, beats, on-screen text. review_generation grades a generate against its original prompt and returns matches_prompt, issues, severity (ok / minor / broken), and a suggested fix. Both cost credits. Do not run them on every generate. Reserve them for the file about to ship — a civic file where a face in the gym or a misspelled hour is more expensive than the check.

What to hunt on a polling-place plate:

• A person the model grew in the middle of the room.
• Readable names on a poll book, a screen, a sticker.
• Hours that do not match the clerk’s posted string.
• A banner the site does not fly.

The review points. It does not patch. Fix, then re-check, then export.

The test: would a neighbour who already votes in that gym say the clip is this room, empty? If they would not, you generated extras. Keep the still.

Hold the precinct. Do not populate it.

Photograph the empty gym or lobby. Animate that file. Overlay hours you authored. Disclose the synthetic media if the clip is realistic AI and the audience requires it. Skip invented voters. A city account is a public building with a camera. A polling-place account is an empty room with hours. Neither is a crowd scene.

FAQ

If we label the video AI-generated, can we add a photoreal line of voters?

Not as a general rule, and not as a substitute for consent. Synthetic media disclosure identifies the media. It does not create a grant from the people depicted. Civic accounts should not be in the replica business. Plate the empty room.

The gym photo has people at the far end. Can we animate it anyway?

Do not animate it. Crop them out of the still, reshoot empty, or use footage you actually shot with a release that covers that take. Do not prompt them out and hope the model rebuilds the floor.

Is a talking AI clerk acceptable if we disclose it?

Disclosure does not turn a constructed clerk into an elections official. Write the hours. Burn overlay on the empty room. If someone must speak a rule, that someone is a real named person, not a generate.

Do we run the publish check on every generate?

No. Check a video before you publish it costs credits. Use it on the keeper, especially to catch a face or a wrong hour, not as a taste test on take one.