Hey Google, “How to Vote”
Google has been injecting as much as information possible into its suite of apps whenever needed. The company has added a COVID-19 layer in Maps recently, better showed results of nearby medical centres and introduced new tools to fight disinformation. Now, as a new support feature, Google will tell users in the US about election voting. With just a few weeks to presidential elections, Google thought giving more information about voting is necessary for citizens to be rightly informed. Thus, it has announced new support in Google Search, Maps and on its Assistant to let people search for nearby voting stations or the mailing ballot boxes easily. Users in the US can search for “How to vote” in the Google Search or Maps or ask the same to their Voice Assistant to see the results of nearby voting centres. Users can try other requests like “early voting locations” or “ballot drop boxes near me” to get similar results. This will also tell them if they need to vote in person or by a mail-in ballot system. Also, based on region, it will tell whether they have to vote early or on the election day. Alongside results, it will also remind them to complete the form properly and seal it before dropping if following the mail-in system. Google says this information can be accessed through smartphones, smart speaker and smart display. This data is taken from the Voting Information Project, which is a partnership between state election officials and Democracy Works, a nonprofit organization. While it plans to serve this information in more than 200,000 locations, it will show up the election websites of state and local websites in case of unavailability.
