Google sends 700,000 voters to wrong polling places?

Aristotle premised its prediction on a series of simulations: The company selected about 1,000 households in targeted states, compared their polling place data against Google’s app and derived an error rate it later used to predict the number of area households possibly affected by the mishap.

Google’s election gadget, which is embeddable and therefore is probably sitting on sites across the Internet (including Facebook), draws its data from the Voting Information Project as well as directly from individual election boards. It was not clear as of this writing where the break might have happened. The Voting Information Project, a program of the Pew Center on the States, draws its data directly from various election agencies around the country and makes it available for free to third parties to use for applications like Google’s tool, or the Mobile Polling Place Locator we told you about last week. In cases where agencies did not set up a pipeline via the Voting Information Project, Google receive polling place information directly from election agencies themselves.

“As millions of Americans went to the polls on Tuesday, Google offered to provide voters with accurate information about their polling place. Unfortunately, according to investigations by various reporters and observers, and an Aristotle review of the tool, the technology used likely produced erroneous information for some voters. (FastCompany, Politico, ResourceShelf) While we do not know the full scope of the problem, any mistakes should be reason for concern for Google and for all of us. The races decided by razor-thin margins or still hanging in the balance illustrate this point. So does the experience of anyone who was directed to the wrong polling place on Election Day.”