Google announced on Monday a Verified Sender Program that allows political committees to bypass standard Gmail spam filters and reach users more directly. As reported by The New York Times, the program will launch on Sep. 8, and it is open to any 527 tax-exempt candidate, political party, PAC, or other political committee in the US.
To be eligible, the committee must verify its sending domain with Campaign Verify, use Google’s Postmaster Tools to monitor the email-sending operation, and keep its spam rate below 0.3% over a 14-day average.
Gmail users remain in full control of the emails they receive. They can continue to mark messages from any user, including political committees, as spam, block them, or unsubscribe from their mailing lists.
If a political committee exceeds the 0.3% spam threshold, it may be suspended for seven days or permanently terminated from the Verified Sender Program, Google says. After that, committees can continue using their domain to send messages, but they will be subject to Gmail’s spam filters. The feature uses machine learning and user feedback to identify emails that users like to see in their inboxes and to keep unwanted, unsolicited, or dangerous emails in a separate Spam folder.
Notably, Google’s new Verified Sender Program will launch around two months before the midterm elections in the US. Google began reaching out to sections of both parties regarding the program on Monday, The NYT reports, citing two sources familiar with the development.
This, however, isn’t the first time Google has tried a no-spam program for politicians. The Federal Election Commission approved a similar yet limited pilot program for Gmail in 2022.
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The same year, the Republicans sued Google over claims that it was suppressing the party’s email outreach by sending messages directly to spam folders. A federal judge dismissed the claims in 2023.
Last year, FTC chairman Andrew N. Ferguson raised the issue with Google once again. In a two-page letter to CEO Sundar Pichai, Ferguson claimed he could make a federal case out of Gmail’s spam filters, and the feature could qualify as “unfair or deceptive acts or practices.”
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Jibin is a tech news writer based out of Ahmedabad, India. Previously, he served as the editor of iGeeksBlog and is a self-proclaimed tech enthusiast who loves breaking down complex information for a broader audience.
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