Election 2024: Google corrects Elon Musk-boosted declare about Kamala Harris bias

X proprietor and Trump supporter Elon Musk reposted a message on Election Day claiming Google helps Harris voters discover polling locations, whereas not doing the identical for Trump voters, however the search large is doing no such factor.

At about 3 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Musk reposted a conspiracy principle on X, the social media website he owns, that falsely claims Google is giving Kamala Harris an unfair benefit.

Sharing a message from X person DogeDesigner to his 203 million followers, Musk wrote, “Are others seeing this too?” In accordance with DogeDesigner, “Google exhibits a ‘The place to Vote’ part with a map for Kamala Harris, however not for Donald Trump.

Google is the largest company donor to the Democratic Social gathering.”

The issue is DogeDesigner is means off — Google’s “The place to Vote” part consists of voting data for counties, not candidates. Presumably unbeknownst to each DogeDesigner and Musk, there’s a Harris County in each Texas and Georgia.

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Beneath DogeDesigner’s put up was a Group Word with extra context supplied: “The search question works as a result of Harris is a county in Texas.”

Readers added that surname-sounding counties like Clark, Clinton, Eden, Franklin, Floyd, Leon, and Marcy are all searchable on Google’s “The place to Vote” characteristic.

Moreover, the NewsFromGoogle X account tweeted an analogous message:

Placated by Google’s rationalization, Musk reposted their message at about 4 p.m. EST, writing, “Thanks for the clarification,” although his unique repost on the topic stays on his account.

Misinformation has been rife throughout the 2024 election. Lies, conspiracy theories, and political deepfakes have circulated on main social media platforms, making it tough for folks to know what’s actual and what’s not. Simply days earlier than the election, for instance, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a warning, urging voters to hunt dependable data from trusted sources, together with their native election workplace.

Yow will discover your native workplace through the use of this search software from the U.S. authorities. By its #TrustedInfo2024 marketing campaign, the Nationwide Affiliation of Secretaries of State additionally gives a roundup of official hyperlinks to incessantly requested questions on each state and territory’s election course of. By these hyperlinks, you may be taught fundamental, correct details about the election, reminiscent of the place to vote and the way votes are counted, subjects which may be topic to last-minute rumors and misinformation.

To vet suspicious claims in actual time, you may additionally contemplate consulting trusted fact-checking and misinformation-detecting shops, together with Truth.test.org, Politifact, The Washington Publish’s Truth Checker, Snopes, and NewsGuard’s Election Misinformation Monitoring Heart.