  High-quality online civic infrastructure is increasingly critical for the
success of democratic processes. There is a pervasive reliance on search
engines to find facts and information necessary for political participation and
oversight. We find that approximately 10\% of the top Google search results are
likely to mislead California information seekers who use search to identify
their congressional representatives. 70\% of the misleading results appear in
featured snippets above the organic search results. We use both qualitative and
quantitative methods to understand what aspects of the information ecosystem
lead to this sociotechnical breakdown. Factors identified include Google's
heavy reliance on Wikipedia, the lack of authoritative, machine parsable, high
accuracy data about the identity of elected officials based on geographic
location, and the search engine's treatment of under-specified queries. We
recommend steps that Google can take to meet its stated commitment to providing
high quality civic information, and steps that information providers can take
to improve the legibility and quality of information about congressional
representatives available to search algorithms.
