The Republican National Committee has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, alleging that Google is suppressing the GOP vote in November by sending millions of RNC election emails to recipients’ spam folders.
According to RNC officials, over 22 million emails sent in the last three days of September from the RNC were spammed by Google; over 3.1 million on September 28, over 9.8 million on September 29, and over 9.97 million on September 30.
“Every single month, like clockwork, Google suppresses important GOTV and fundraising emails at the end of the month, with zero explanation nor commitment from Google to resolve this issue,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel claimed to Fox News Digital. “We are less than 40 days out from Election Day, and important GOTV emails to our opted-in voters in states that have already started early voting are being systematically sent to spam.”
“Enough is enough,” she added. “Big Tech bias is undermining the democratic process and the RNC is exploring our legal options to put an end to this clear pattern of bias.”
One RNC official said the committee has been communicating with Google “for months” but “no resolution” has been effected.
Another official pointed out their improvements to their emails, citing recency of click, petition signature, and donation.
“Our emails have been suppressed despite concrete changes that have improved overall performance. Despite having a significantly positive impact on performance, this appears to have had absolutely no impact on the timing of this end-of-month spamming,” the official said.
Evidence was offered by the RNC that party emails go from “strong inbox delivery— 90-100%” down to 0% by the time the month is ending.
Google spokesperson José Castañeda defended the company to Fox News.
“We enable political committees and other organizations to reach their constituents, donors, and key audiences via email,” he said. “When Gmail users say that they don’t want to receive an email, we place the email in the spam folder, politics or political affiliation plays no role in this determination. We recently launched a Federal Election Commission approved pilot program with a small number of campaigns to study whether these changes improve the user experience during this election period.”
An April study conducted by researchers at North Carolina State University found that Gmail favored candidates on the political Left. The study stated, “Gmail … retained the majority of left-wing candidate emails in inbox (< 10.12% marked as spam) while sent the majority of right-wing candidate emails to the spam folder (up to 77.2% marked as spam).”
The study also claimed that Gmail “marks a significantly higher percentage (67.6%) of emails from the right as spam compared to the emails from left (just 8.2%). Gmail marked 59.3% more emails from the right candidates as spam compared to the left candidates.”
