RNC exploring legal options after claiming Google suppressed 22M GOTV, fundraising emails in Sept

Democratic lawmakers may continue to beat the drum that 2020 was the “freest and fairest” election, but with weeks to go until the 2022 midterms, Big Tech continues to provide reasons for concern including accusations from the Republican National Committee (RNC) that millions of get-out-the-vote (GOTV) messages had been “suppressed.”

For months, the RNC has been monitoring the deliverability of emails to the inboxes of Gmail users and an undeniable pattern has emerged. Providing their findings to Fox News Digital, they found a “clear pattern of bias” as their reportedly crucial end-of-month fundraising emails were being kicked into users’ spam folders rather than their inboxes.

“Every single month, like clockwork,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told Fox News. “Google suppresses important GOTV and fundraising emails at the end of the month, with zero explanation nor commitment from Google to resolve this issue. 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.”

Previously, she had shared the tracking from February through the end of June on Twitter showing the drop from between 90-100 percent deliverability down to 0 percent each month, and Monday, Fox News reported that the pattern has continued.

A spokesperson for the RNC said of more than 22 million emails “suppressed” at the end of September, 358,000 were specifically GOTV. Total emails sent to spam included 3.1 million on Sept. 28, 9.8 million on Sept. 29, and 9.97 million on Sept. 30.

“Our emails have been suppressed despite concrete changes that have improved overall performance,” the spokesperson said. “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.”

Suggesting legal recourse was needed, the spokesperson also alleged that “disproportionate suppression of Republican emails constitutes an illegal corporate contribution to Democrat candidates.”

However, Google spokesperson José Castañeda told Fox News there was nothing out of sorts and suggested if RNC emails were hitting spam folders it was because of a decision by the recipient. “We enable political committees and other organizations to reach their constituents, donors, and key audiences via email. 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.”

The pilot program he mentioned was approved by the FEC 4-1 and supposedly keeps users, not Google, “100% in control,” allowing for a distinction between choices to unsubscribe or deem messages spam. Participating campaigns that exceed a five percent spam rate would be removed from the pilot program.

“We will continue to listen and respond to feedback as the pilot progresses,” Casteñeda added.

Republicans, having seen the dramatic effects that Big Tech can have on elections, such as the reported suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in the days leading up to the 2020 presidential election, are not satisfied with the assurances of Google and pointed to a North Carolina State University study that found Republican emails were sent to spam 820 percent more often than Democrat fundraising emails and, with only 32 percent of their total fundraising efforts from 2019-2020 reaching audiences to raise $737 million, they claim the spammed 68 percent cost them $1.5 billion in donations for 2020.

“Enough is enough,” McDaniel railed. “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.”

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