Ferguson Announces Second Campaign Finance Suit Against Google

WASHINGTON — Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has announced a second lawsuit against Google over campaign finance disclosures.

Ferguson issued a statement Monday morning confirming the suit, saying that Google had, for a second time, failed to keep-legally required documentation showing who paid for campaign advertisements on their site.

Ferguson's statement reads in part:

"I take repeat violations of our campaign finance laws seriously. This is the second time Google has been accused of not complying with campaign finance laws related to making required information about political advertisements available to Washington voters."

As a result of the first lawsuit, Google ended up paying Washington $217,000. Ferguson says the Public Disclosure Commission alerted his office on September 3 that Google may have still been breaking campaign disclosure requirements

Related: Twitter To Pay WA $100,000 For Campaign Finance Violations

Campaign finance law in Washington requires advertisers to keep track of all the following information on ads they sell:

• The name of the candidate or measure that the ad supports or attacks.
• The dates the ads were shown or broadcast.
• The name and address of the person who sponsored the ad.
• The total cost of the ad, and who paid for it (if it is someone other than the sponsor) and how they paid for it.

"In 1972, the people of Washington passed Initiative 276 requiring transparency in our elections," Ferguson said. "We will continue working to ensure that our elections are transparent."

Exactly what lead the Public Disclosure Commission to flag Google for violating disclosure laws has not been announced. Ferguson says he normally would not release any information on a suit this far in advance of actually filing it, but was required by statute to announce his decision to sue within 45 days of receiving the commission's referral.

The suit will mark the fourth time that Washington has filed suit against a major social media platform in recent years. Earlier this month, Twitter paid the state $100,000 for violating the same campaign finance disclosure requirements. In 2018, Facebook paid $200,000 for similar failures to maintain political advertising records, and there is an ongoing suit against Facebook filed in April, in which Washington claims the company is intentionally violating public records laws to hide how much they're receiving from political campaigns.

Read Ferguson's whole statement on the Office of the Attorney General's website.