The Federal Election Commission accepted a new plan from Google on Thursday to prevent campaign emails from being designated as spam.
Candidates, political party committees, and leadership political action committees would be able to register for the program, which would exclude their communications from Gmail’s spam detection algorithms. While Google did not need FEC approval before launching the initiative, it did seek a vote earlier this summer to guarantee the operation would not violate existing election rules. The FEC said Google’s scheme was permissible in its verdict on Thursday.
“I have a hard time getting around the reality that this is a unique advantage granted to political committees, and only political committees,” FEC commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub said during the agency’s open meeting on Thursday. Because of the program’s exclusivity, Weintraub compared it to Google making an “in-kind” gift to political organizations.
