Google ’s polling shoes locator was supposed to make your life easier by guiding you to the appropriate polling office so that you may vote . The only trouble ? It may have guided you and hundred of thou to the awry place .
After a Fast Company editor begin a wrong address from Google ’s polling place locator this morning , we wondered whetherothers got likewise forged info on mid - term election mean solar day from Google ’s tool . agree to Aristotle , a individual troupe that provides political technology and data for campaigns , the Google polling place finder may have had locations haywire for as many as 727,000 households in the 12 states they sample .
In other password , as many as a million or more people who google where to vote this morning may have been sent to the awry place . In state such as New York , voting at the wrong polling lieu is forbid .
“ For people in this business , there are few things you lose sleep over more than sending people to the unseasonable polling place on election day , ” John Phillips , CEO of Aristotle , tells Fast Company .
The computer error charge per unit from the Google tool , according to Aristotle ’s analysis , ranged from 0.001 % ( for Iowa ) to 18 % ( for the province of Washington ) . Extrapolating from that datum , Aristotle estimated that Google ’s data had incorrect polling seat selective information for about 727,000 household in those 12 states ( Arkansas , Hawaii , Iowa , Kansas , Maryland , Mississippi , Montana , Nebraska , North Carolina , Virginia , Washington , DC , and Washington state ) .
Chart provided by Aristotle
Google ’s election widget , which is embeddable and therefore is probably sitting on site across the cyberspace ( including Facebook ) , draws its datum from the Voting Information Project as well as immediately from single election circuit card . It was not clear as of this penning where the break might have happened .
The Voting Information Project , a program of the Pew Center on the States , draws its information directly from various election authority around the nation and makes it useable for barren to third parties to use for applications programme like Google ’s tool , or theMobile Polling Place Locatorwe told you about last week . In grammatical case where agencies did not set up a pipeline via the Voting Information Project , Google receive polling place information straight from election agencies themselves .
Doug Chapin , the film director of Election Initiatives at the Pew Center , told us that the VIP works “ closely with election officials to get the most up - to - date prescribed data . ” “ We will continue to work hard to make certain that the information we get is not only easy for voters to find and use but is also accurate — a process which began long before Election Day 2010 and will go on going forrader , ” he say .
A Google spokesperson tell us this dayspring , “ We are invariably updating the tool to make certain it reflect the most up - to - date information furnish to us by the Board of Elections . ” They also take note that the dick includes a link where substance abuser can send information about discrepancy . Reached again today , Google refuse to elaborate on its statement follow the Aristotle revelations .
Pundits may deplore the lack of elector participation in our election . But the problems with the Google instrument ’s data only underline the fact that , even in this hyperconnected era , data about polling places across the land is still not kept in a individual , standardised location , which cave the feat of companies like Google to make tools that make it simple and well-to-do for voters to find up where they should show up add up Election Day .
In the meantime , if you have n’t vote yet and want to be tiptop - supererogatory sure of where to vote , you might desire to locate your country or metropolis election agency online and relate to their selective information . ( For example , here ’s the list ofPolling Place Lookupsfor election table in California . )
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