Oh boy, here we go again! The Search feature in Windows 10 is known go to off tangent every now and then, and it just did so once again where it went crazy for the upcoming US elections.
There is a long line of blunders that this OS feature has been making lately, whether it is breaking down altogether or serving ads and suggestions totally out of the blue. And now, the integrated search component in Windows 10 is doing something similar.
As recounted in this Reddit thread, Windows Search has started recommending people to go vote in the upcoming US Presidential elections.
This is the message that shows up in the search UI:
And this is what is asks:
“Are you registered to vote? Check your status and deadlines.”
Now, normally that would not be problem, and in fact, is a nudge in the right direction to get users to prepare for election day. But the awkward thing is that this message shows up even on computers that are not located in the United States.
The banner is being displayed in various countries across the world, including several in Europe, like the Netherlands. Same goes for users in Argentina and Canada.
One reason for this unexpected message showing up for these users is that they may have set their language settings in the operating system to US English, which is what may have prompted this server-side switch to display these messages.
Nothing from Microsoft about this yet, and we likely may not hear anything either.
