This article will soon be available in Spanish on El Tiempo Latino.
Social media users were quick to point out alleged bias against former President Donald Trump when Google searched on Election Day returned an interactive map displaying your polling station when including “Harris,” not Trump; Harris is a county in Texas whereas “Trump” does not designate one specific place or address.
As millions of voters headed out the polls to cast their ballots on Nov. 5, social media accounts falsely asserted Google was interfering in their election by giving Kamala Harris different search results than Donald Trump.
As it had done previously, in late October the company unrolled a map search feature designed to provide voters with locations when searching for terms like “where to vote” or “ballot dropboxes.”
Un surprising discovery revealed itself when one queried “where can I vote for Harris,” yet did not show when searching “where can I vote for Trump.”
Google’s interactive “Where to Vote” map became visible upon adding Harris or Vance as place names but not Trump; hence its creation by this search feature.
Numerous social media accounts quickly hypothesized that Google was employing different search results as part of an attempt to influence an election result.
“Google shows an interactive Map-Vote section featuring Kamala Harris but not Donald Trump,” per one prominent post on X.com, who noted: “Google is also one of the leading corporate donors to Democratic politics and this news should come as no surprise; their donations to Democratic candidates like Harris exceed any others by far.
Elon Musk, who has long supported President Donald Trump, shared this post and asked whether others were seeing what he saw: “Are others seeing this too?” Within 30 minutes he posted twice more about it including one post that read: “This is so messed up; please delete.”
But this disparity could simply be explained by one candidate having an obscure location name; Harris represents Harris County in Texas while Trump does not refer to any specific place.
Indeed, while we could reproduce Harris’ results, we also discovered that when adding his first name alone we did not obtain the map result. Instead it only appeared when adding various common place-names like Jones Davis Williams Franklin Johnson — as well as keeping our search terms simple by just typing out “Where can I vote.”
Within hours of Musk resharing his comment, Google responded and provided clarity regarding this matter.
“The “Where to Vote” Panel Is Triggering For Certain Searches in Texas Due to Harris Being Both County And Name””According to an X post from the company. A fix will soon follow and note very few search for voting places this way”.
Vance County can be found in North Carolina.
Google quickly implemented a fix. According to their blog post, map search result features use data provided by Voting Information Project – an alliance among state and local election officials and Democracy Works, an nonpartisan civic technology nonprofit funded by both. Google supports funding this endeavor.
As for Google being “the largest corporate donor to Democrats”, that statement is false: neither Google itself or its political action committee were permitted to contribute directly. As per OpenSecrets, which tracks political contributions, their political action committee contributed slightly more funds toward Republicans this election cycle; employee contributions made from Google parent company Alphabet generally favoring Democrats overall but total amount donated was 49th among all organizations OpenSecrets tracks.
Musk did share Google’s post, noting his thanks and including a note for readers explaining that while Kamala, Trump, and Walz may work as place names there may not exist an exact match within any city/county/state naming conventions – such as one would find with other location name searches – due to limited data sets being available with matching names being difficult.
But even after Google provided its explanation, claims of election interference continued to surface and people started misinterpreting its response as admitting guilt for any potential wrongdoing.
“Google recognizes Donald Trump and Harris search engine discrepancy; says fix is coming,” reads one X post. This issue interferes with US elections directly.
On November 11th morning after Trump had won, just before the Associated Press declared his election victory, the same account continued its accusations of improper activity by saying something about malfeasance against Clinton campaign.
“What happens to Google once the Trump administration investigates them for election interference?” read a post online.
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Kitchen, Geordy. “Find Voting Information with Google Search and Maps.” The Keyword (Google company blog). 20 October 2024.
News from Google (@NewsFromGoogle). The Where-To-Vote Panel Is Triggering Due To Name Similarities […] “For certain specific searches involving Harris or Vance as this county names appear multiple times within TX; similarly with Vance also having similar similarities.” A solution will soon be in place as very few people actually search this way.” X. 5 November 2024.
Google News (@NewsFromGoogle) announced: “Update: This issue has now been addressed.” X. 5 Nov 2024.
Google Inc: Open Secrets Profile 2024 Accessed 6 Nov 2024
“Alphabet Inc,” Open Secrets. Accessed November 6, 2024.
Yoon, Robert. Why the Associated Press Called Wisconsin and the White House for Donald Trump.” AP 6 November 2024.
