What Americans asked Google about the election this week
With less than three weeks to go until the U.S. presidential election, you can see what's on voters' minds by looking at our Google searches. These days, our search queries tend to focus mostly on the debates, coronavirus, and the Supreme Court.
For the period between Oct. 8 and Oct. 14, Google sent over some of the most frequent election-related questions Americans are asking the search engine.
1. How to pack the Supreme Court?
2. Who are the Supreme Court justices?
These two queries are about the Supreme Court as Senate confirmation hearings with Donald Trump pick Amy Coney Barrett were underway all this week.
"Packing the court" keeps coming up in search as Joe Biden and his vice-presidential running mate Kamala Harris seek to postpone the Supreme Court nomination until after the election.
"Packing" just means increasing the number of justices to the bench. There's nothing within the Constitution that sets or limits the number of justices. So if Biden won the election, he could theoretically counteract Trump's conservative selection and appoint a more party-aligned justice... or two, or three.
If successfully appointed to the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett would replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who died last month. The other sitting eight justices are:
Chief Justice John Roberts
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas
Associate Justice Stephen Breyer
Associate Justice Samuel Alito
Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Associate Justice Elena Kagan
Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch
Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh
3. How old is Senator Kamala Harris? 4. How old is Mike Pence?
The vice-presidential debate was held the night of Oct. 7 and it stayed on people's minds (and searches) into the next week, even if it's just basic questions about the candidates' ages. Harris, by the way, will be 56 on Oct. 20. Pence turned 61 in June.
5. How is Chris Christie doing?
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The former New Jersey governor and Trump aide tested positive for COVID-19 after helping Trump with debate prep without masks or proper social distancing. Trump had contracted COVID-19 earlier this month and it spread throughout his administration and re-election campaign staff. Christie was also at the White House event for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, which Dr. Anthony Fauci called a superspreader event.
On Thursday, Christie revealed he had spent seven days in the ICU.
Topics Google Politics Supreme Court COVID-19
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
