Making Democracy a Little Bit Easier — A Free Election API for November
Making Democracy a Little Bit Easier — A Free Election API for the November 3, 2015 Elections
Collecting geographic data and improving access to it is a bit of an obsession of ours these days. Along the way we have uncovered some really interesting and terrifying nuggets about the way we as a country collect and share data about who and what is on your ballot each election.
Turns out, as a citizen, finding out exactly what you will be voting on ahead of an election is a herculean task.
In recent years Google has helped bring about the Civic API making strides to plug this gap and today we want to announce that we are also launching an elections API that we believe advances that important work.
Why it matters:
The country’s election infrastructure is outdated, confusing, and often unintelligible. It should come as no surprise that we the people are surprised by what we see in the ballot box every election. Our goal as a company is simple — by next November we want to be able to provide this information for every address in the country.
What it does:
Give our API an address and we will show you your ballot from top to bottom. Many communities are facing an election this November 3, 2015. So we have picked a few key places where our API will serve up a ballot:
- Houston, TX
- San Francisco, CA
- Columbus, OH
- Akron, OH
- Toledo, OH
- Indianapolis, IN
- Fairfax, VA
- Spokane, WA
- Manchester, NH
- Miami-Dade County, FL
- Dallas County, TX
- King County, WA
- Wayne County, MI
- New York, NY
- Kentucky (state-wide)
- Mississippi (state-wide)
What are the details:
The API is open to anyone. We are excited to see what comes from this data. You can find developer documentation about it here. We put a rate limit in place for exploration purposes, but let us know if you have an interest in working with it at scale.
Happy voting!
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