On November 5, the day of the U.S. election for the 47th president, messages about Google, “the largest corporate donor of the Democratic Party,” interfering in the presidential race appeared online. The claim stated that when users searched for “where to vote for Harris” (the Democratic Party candidate), Google displayed a special map with polling station locations, while a similar search with the name “Trump” (the Republican Party candidate) did not yield the same results.
What happened?
On November 5, the day of the U.S. presidential election, a social media account on X (formerly Twitter) with the username DogeDesigner (@cb_doge), known for regularly posting complimentary content about Donald Trump and Elon Musk (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), published a post (archived) stating:
“Google shows a ‘Where to Vote’ section with a map for Kamala Harris, but not for Donald Trump. Google is the biggest corporate donor to the Democratic Party,” DogeDesigner wrote.
By the time this article was written, the post had garnered 53.4 million views. The claim was further shared by other X users, including David Sacks (@DavidSacks, archived), American AF (@iAnonPatriot, archived), and was even picked up by the Telegram channel “Medved” (archived), known for regularly writing pro-Russian posts.
“Fair and democratic elections in America,” said “Medved”’s authors.
The news goes on to say that Google has confirmed the existence of the flaw in the search results, but those spreading the message have not explained the nature of it.
Analysis
Responding to the claim that a search query “where to vote for Harris” displayed a special map with polling station locations, Google confirmed that claim on November 5 via its official X page.
Google clarified that the issue arose because “Harris” is not only the surname of the U.S. presidential candidate but also the name of a county in Texas.
“The “where to vote” panel is triggering for some specific searches bc Harris is also the name of a county in TX. Happens for “Vance” too bc it’s also the name of a county. Fix is coming,” Google wrote.
Google also noted that very few people actually search for polling places in this manner. Soon, they announced that the settings had been corrected.
To verify the update, we conducted similar search queries from within the United States.
As a result, searches for “where to vote for Trump” and “where to vote for Harris” on Google no longer display a list of polling locations in Harris County, Texas.
So, Google did show locations of voting station to a search query of “where to vote for Harris,” but, because of the programming mistake, was showing polling locations in Harris County, Texas.
Conclusion: Manipulation
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