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Google admits to blunder with Harris, Trump online searches

Google users noticed a massive discrepancy in information when looking up ways to vote in the election — but the tech giant says there’s a good reason.

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Google has acknowledged an issue that users have been flagging when trying to search for information about how to vote in the US election.

Searches for “Where can I vote for Harris” produce an interactive map tool to find polling places, despite not doing the same for inquiries of “Where can I vote for Trump”.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has supported Mr Trump during his election campaign, was among those who picked up the discrepancy.

Searches of ‘Where can I vote for Harris’ fielded polling place information. Picture: Google
Searches of ‘Where can I vote for Harris’ fielded polling place information. Picture: Google
There was no such information when people searched the same thing for Donald Trump. Picture: Google
There was no such information when people searched the same thing for Donald Trump. Picture: Google

“Are others seeing this too?” he wrote on X alongside a retweet of a video showing Google issue.

“The ‘where to vote’ panel is triggering for some specific searches [because] Harris is also the name of a county in [Texas],” Google said in a statement.

“Fix is coming,” the search giant said, adding: “Note very few people actually search for voting places this way.”

Google said a similar thing happened when people searched for JD Vance.
Google said a similar thing happened when people searched for JD Vance.

Google pointed out a similar issue was happening with “Where to vote for (Republican vice presidential candidate JD) Vance” and the North Carolina county of Vance.

The interactive display appears to have been sponsored by the Voter Information Project from Democracy Works.

Notably, searches of “Where can I vote for Kamala” did not generate the interactive map either.

A version of this article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission

Originally published as Google admits to blunder with Harris, Trump online searches

Original URL: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/technology/online/google-admits-to-blunder-with-harris-trump-online-searches/news-story/f57bb0abcebf573146246ae976b96d50