A Floating Headline, a Misleading Claim: A Google Search Ad Targets Florida Election Officials
Authors: Vanessa Molter and Daniel Bush, Stanford Internet Observatory
Research: Jack Cable, Carly Miller, Ana Sophia Nicholls, and Chase Small, Stanford Internet Observatory
On Sept. 15, EIP identified a misleading ad targeting Google Search users alleging voter fraud in Florida. In this case, a link reading “Florida Election Officials Busted For Massive Voter Fraud” appears as an ad paid for by the Florida Citizens’ Alliance, a conservative advocacy group pushing for changes in public school textbooks used in Florida. On Sept. 14, a Google search in Seattle for “voter fraud Florida” displayed the ad above search results. The ad links to the Florida Citizens Alliance website, which in turn links to a defunct article from 2016 alleging there had been large-scale voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election in Florida, a claim that PolitiFact has rated false. Notably, while the headline alleges “massive voter fraud,” the body of the ad refers to the Florida Citizens’ Alliance podcast series about Common Core standards and describes other education-related initiatives.
The Florida Citizens’ Alliance ad that appeared on Google Search on Sept. 15, 2020
The misleading article used by the Florida Citizens’ Alliance in this ad first circulated in November 2016 alongside similar claims, such as a debunked article on Bipartisan Report. According to the Tampa Bay Times, these false claims were sparked by an affidavit filed by a temporary elections worker in Florida. The worker claimed to observe ballot workers filling out blank ballots and believed the ballot workers were tampering with the election. In fact, they were transferring faxed absentee ballots filed by overseas military personnel onto paper ballots. This was done to make the absentee-ballots machine-readable for the voting machines, a process allowed under Florida state law.
Last week, EIP published a blog post on misleading Google ads and loopholes in Google’s transparency policies after identifying an ad campaign for Google Search that appeared to be intended to undermine voters’ confidence in voting by mail. EIP analysts found that ads directing users to the Washington Times website relied on misrepresentation and misleading claims and that, because Google’s policies exempt news organizations from its transparency reports, it was difficult to learn more about who was paying for the ads and whom they were targeting.
The ad in this case is arguably more problematic because it makes false (as opposed to misleading) claims about election fraud, and, since the article that would supposedly corroborate the claim made in the ad no longer exists, it is very difficult for the user to learn more about or evaluate the claim of “massive voter fraud.” In essence, the ad is no longer anchored to any reality.
This ad would seem to violate Google’s ad policies, which state that any advertisement on the platform must not make “claims that are demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process”, including “[i]nformation about public voting procedures”.
Information shared with Google users when clicking “About” under an ad .
While Google does share the name of the advertiser, the ad itself does not appear in Google’s Transparency Report, which is where Google archives political advertisements shown in the United States. This suggests that, like the ads we reviewed in last week’s post, this ad does not qualify as a political advertisement under Google’s policies, which apply to ads that feature federal and state candidates, parties and ads about specific ballot measures. Notably absent from this policy are organizations seeking to influence public perception about electoral processes themselves. Google’s policies appear in line with requirements set by the FEC, which define an electioneering communication as referring to “a clearly identified candidate for federal office.”
In last week’s post, EIP highlighted what we consider loopholes in Google’s policies, and the ad we examine here reinforces the need for the changes we outlined in that post. Google could fix this problem by:
Enforcing its prohibition on false claims in ads and removing this ad.
Expanding the definition of political ads to include advertisements on the electoral process itself, which would set a higher barrier to misleading claims and include the advertisements in the Google Transparency Report.
