Google Didn’t Show Bias in Filtering Campaign-Ad Pitches, FEC Says

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has dismissed a complaint from Republicans that Google’s Gmail app aided Democratic candidates by sending GOP fundraising emails to spam at a far higher rate than Democratic solicitations. The Republican National Committee and others contended that the alleged benefit amounted to unreported campaign contributions to Democrats. The Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the National Republican Congressional Committee complained to the FEC in 2022, citing an academic study by North Carolina State University that showed that nearly 70% of emails from Republican candidates were sent to spam compared with fewer than 1 in 10 from Democrat candidates from 2019 to 2020.  But in a letter to Google, the FEC said it “found no reason to believe” that Google made prohibited in-kind corporate contributions, and that any skewed results from its spam filter algorithms were inadvertent. “Google has credibly supported its claim that its spam filter is in place for commercial reasons and thus did not constitute a contribution” within the meaning of federal campaign laws, according to an FEC analysis.