Google Sides With Politicians Over Its Own Users

Google subtly released an updated spam policy that may help political campaigns whose emails get flagged as such.

The big tech giant took to its Help Center page Monday to announce a new Gmail program allowing political groups to sidestep its spam filter, The New York Times reported. The Gmail Verified Sender Program will permit political entities to send fundraising emails so long as they comply with Google’s eligibility policies and verify status as a political committee using Campaign Verify, according to the company’s Help page.

Political senders must maintain a “spam rate below 0.3%” over an average of 14 days, according to Google’s policies for the program. The company warns that a Gmail account can be suspended for 7 days or terminated from the Verified Sender Program if it does not abide by Google’s terms.

“Following our previous pilot, this program is designed to connect people with the emails they want to receive while keeping them fully in control of their inboxes,” a Google spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “To participate, bulk senders must meet strict security and compliance requirements, ensuring that messages people receive are relevant, useful, and verified.”

Democrats think the program helps bad actors doing political campaign work.

“Heading into the 2026 elections, Gmail users are going to be flooded with unwanted political spam because Google decided to create a V.I.P. lane for campaigns,” Kenneth Pennington, a Democratic digital strategist and veteran online fund-raiser, said, according to the NYT. “This is a bad deal for Gmail users and a gift to bad actors in the political fund-raising space.”

Meanwhile, other Democrats saw the policy shift as a potential benefit for their party, the NYT reported. ActBlue previously raised significantly more money online than WinRed between 2023 and 2024, according to OpenSecrets.

Campaign Verify did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

“A step in the right direction, but will it actually close the gap?” Austin Boedigheimer, a Republican email strategist with InboxGOP, said in an X post highlighting Google’s announcement. “Dems have roughly a 2-to-1 inboxing advantage despite similar compliance this year.”

The Republican National Committee previously claimed Google was “throttling its email messages” and sued the tech company in Oct. 2022.

Google had released a verification pilot program in 2022, and it said the RNC did not register for it. It ended the pilot program in Jan. 2023.

Judge Daniel J. Calabretta, a Biden nominee, said the case was “pure speculation,” according to his Aug. 2023 ruling, and he threw out the case in July 2024. The Federal Election Commission similarly “found no reason to believe” Republicans’ complaints about bias in the spam filter system, the Wall Street Journal reported in Jan. 2023.

“For years Google’s algorithm silenced Republican voices, burying our emails in spam while Democrats’ landed in the inbox,” Will Kiley, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) said, the NYT reported. “This program is a real chance to fix it and let voters hear from the candidates they choose to follow.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee joined the FEC complaint along with the RNC and NRCC in April 2022, according to an NRSC press release.