UPDATED: A new conspiracy theory implying Google was trying to meddle in the closely watched presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump started to take root on Election Day — but the search giant said there’s a logical explanation for why searches about where to vote for each candidate were different.
Earlier Tuesday, searches on Google for “Where can I vote for Harris?” displayed a “Where to vote” map that lets uses enter their street address to find their polling location. However, a Google search for “Where can I vote for Trump?” did not show a similar map.
According to Google, the “Where to vote” panel was appearing for some specific searches for Harris because that’s also the name of a county in Texas. (Similarly, a search for “Where can I vote for Vance” was triggering the map panel because of Vance County, N.C.) The internet company, replying to a post on X by Elon Musk highlighting the issue, said a “fix is coming” and noted that “very few people actually search for voting places this way.” Musk responded, “Thanks for the clarification.”
As of around 3:30 p.m. ET, Google searches for “Where can I vote for Harris” were no longer showing the voting map panel.
To be sure, it’s far more likely that interested voters will simply enter a search string such as “Where to vote” or “Where can I vote,” queries that do show the “Where to vote” map.
The different results in searching on Google for “Where can I vote for Harris?” vs. “Where can I vote for Trump?” were called out in a post on X by the DogeDesigner account, whose bio says they are a “UX/UI & Graphic Designer at Dogecoin & MyDoge Inc.” Musk, owner of X and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX — who is a major Trump supporter and Republican donor — quoted the post, and asked, “Are others seeing this too?”
DogeDesigner’s post noted that “Google is the biggest corporate donor to the Democratic Party.” According to OpenSecrets, Alphabet (Google’s parent) gave $14.85 million in federal contributions to Democrats during the 2023-24 election cycle, followed by Netflix with $9.89 million given to Democrats. Meanwhile, Musk’s SpaceX gave $129.4 million to Republicans and $723,883 to Democrats during the 2023-24 election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.
A related controversy flared up two months ago over responses from Amazon’s Alexa voice-enabled assistant — which gave disparate responses to the question “Why should I vote for Donald Trump?” and “Why should I vote for Kamala Harris?”
In early September, when asked about voting for Trump, Alexa replied, “I cannot provide content that promotes a specific political party or a specific candidate.” But when asked about voting for Harris, Alexa in some cases gave a detailed list of reasons why someone should vote for the Democrat in November’s presidential election — including that she is a “strong candidate with a proven track record of accomplishment.” An Amazon spokesperson said at the time that the issue “was an error that was quickly fixed.”