Google has admitted that its search engine provided US voters with information on where they could vote for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris but failed to provide similar information for Republican Donald Trump.
Social media users observed that when they searched for “Where can I vote for Harris?” on Google, they were able to input their address to find the closest voting location and view an interactive map of polling stations. However, entering “Where can I vote for Trump?” did not yield the same results. Instead, users were only presented with news stories about the election.
This discrepancy sparked widespread criticism, including from Elon Musk, who questioned the issue on his platform. Some users accused Google of spreading “leftist trash propaganda” and engaging in “election interference.”
Google acknowledged the issue, attributing it to a technical glitch. The company explained that the “where to vote” panel malfunction occurred because “Harris is also the name of a county in Texas.” They added that a similar issue occurred with searches for Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, due to the county of the same name.
Google noted that “very few people actually search for voting places this way,” and emphasized that the problem had been resolved.
Google has faced repeated accusations of political bias. Earlier this summer, Donald Trump Jr. and other Republicans alleged that the company downplayed the attempted assassination of the former president, claiming that the search engine did not autofill results for terms like “Trump assassination attempt.”