Google fixes 'where to vote' issue in Harris, Vance searches

Google said Tuesday it fixed an error that was causing a “where to vote” panel to appear when searching for Vice President Harris and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

The search giant said the panel was triggered for certain searches, such as “where to vote for Harris” or “where to vote for Vance,” because Harris and Vance are also both names of U.S. counties.

“Note very few people actually search for voting places this way,” Google wrote in a post on the social platform X.

It also responded to Elon Musk, who highlighted another X user’s post about the issue that suggested it reflected a bias against former President Trump.

“Google shows a ‘Where to Vote’ section with a map for Kamala Harris, but not for Donald Trump,” the user wrote. “Google is the biggest corporate donor to the Democratic Party.”

Google explained the county name issue in its response to Musk and noted that a fix was coming.

Republicans, including Trump, have previously accused of Google of favoring Democrats.

Earlier this year, the former president threatened to prosecute the tech giant if elected, alleging the search engine was “only” showing “bad” stories about him and “good” articles about Harris.

“This is an ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, and hopefully the Justice Department will criminally prosecute them for this blatant Interference of Elections,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social in September.

“If not, and subject to the Laws of our Country, I will request their prosecution, at the maximum levels, when I win the Election, and become President of the United States!” he added.

Trump’s comments appeared to come in response to a report from a conservative media watchdog group, which alleged Google “pads its search results” with articles from legacy news outlets that appear above candidates’ campaign websites.

Google noted in a statement at the time that campaign websites for both Harris and Trump “consistently appear at the top of Search for relevant and common search queries.”