Notice of Turndown of the Representatives API

[Google Civic Information API]

We will be turning down the Representatives API next year in April 2025. This API gives developers the ability to identify the elected representatives for a residential address or division. When we first launched the API 10 years ago, there was limited offering of political representation data in the civic information ecosystem. Today, there are alternate providers who are able to serve authoritative representation data directly to developers. 

Some key points:

• Both representativeInfoByAddress and representativeInfoByDivision methods will be turned down next year in April 2025. 

• Until the turndown date, the Representatives API will be functional and supported as usual.

• After the turndown date, the Representatives API will not be available.

• There is no impact on Elections or Divisions APIs, and they will continue to be supported. 

• There are other providers who offer political representation data. The current Representatives API data comes from the Governance Project. 

• To ease the transition to other providers of representation data, Google will launch a new method under the Divisions API which can be used to look up Open Civic Data Identifiers (OCD-IDs) for a given residential address. The OCD-ID can then be used to lookup representatives in other providers’ datasets. This launch is planned by Sep 2024 to give time for integration in your applications by the April 2025 turndown date. 

Please reach out to us if you have questions regarding this notice.

- Civic Information API team

[Nicholas Roberts]

Can we get the list of the Representative API alternative providers please before the changes?

Refactoring Representative API code and data will take some time and I would like to know before we are deep into election season

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-civicinfo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/ce2d8d0e-0346-4165-9e86-9b68809a5748n%40googlegroups.com.

[J. Albert Bowden]

who are these other providers?

Sent from Gmail Mobile

[Eric Rosenfeld]

Who are the other providers that offer political representation data that caused this turndown?

[Anthony Spaelti]

They said the data is coming from Governance Project. 

You can find more information here: https://www.techandciviclife.org/our-work/civic-information/our-data/governance-project/ 

Check out their website on when their own API is ready and how to obtain tables with elected official data until then.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/CAOeaFTGEXwuwxCaj-S8HHT36cwZfn%3DknU12Q1%3D9e04q3i-qRXQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Google Civic Information API]

Thanks for the questions - As we noted in our post, the current Representatives API data comes from the Governance Project. You can find more information in that link.

[Mike Freeman]

Anthony, is the techandciviclife api functional? It says that it's coming, but doesn't have a firm timeline. 

[Nicholas Roberts]

• Our Governance Project data is presently available in XML and tab-delimited .txt files, and contains OCDIDs.

followup question: is the XML and txt files available today? 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/f6a1af1a-d30f-4d1f-b33f-290dd35cb5d2n%40googlegroups.com.

[Jim Crist]

OK, by "turndown" you mean you're "dropping support for", right?  What I need is the ability to pass the API an address and retrieve the state and country district numbers.  Will that still be supported?  Any current progress on the redistricting that occurred in Wisconsin this past February?  Our primary is Tuesday...thanks!!!

[Google Civic Information API]

For questions about the Center for Tech and Civic Life's Governance Project API, you can reach out to da...@techandciviclife.org with the subject line “2025 API”. Their team is best suited to answer your questions about timeline and xml availability.

Regarding Google’s turndown, yes, we will no longer support the Representatives API after April 2025. However, to support the transition, Google will be launching a new method under the Divisions API - it will allow the ability to look up Open Civic Data Identifiers (OCD-IDs) for a given residential address. The new method will be available towards the end of September 2024. Hope that helps! 

- Google Civic Information API team

[Emil Guareno]

I have contacted the Governance Project and they have just informed me that after careful consideration, they have decided to not stand up their Governance Project data in an API. This is very concerning as the other sources they point to may not provide their data for free as Google does. Email attached for reference. 

Google Civic API is crucial to keep these small projects alive and to try and help democracy prevail in the US. We understand that the project is being turned off but can you please help us by working with another organization to ensure that they can provide the same data that Google Civic API provided free of charge? It doesn't even have to be on an API, I'm happy to get full exports of representatives by OCD IDs. I have asked the Governance Project about this and will update the thread once I hear back. 

Thank you guys for all the work that you do. We hope we can continue some of it.

[bob woodward]

Hello fellow refugees!

I checked with the alternate providers listed above, and they are REALLY proud of their data! Prices were about 10x my revenue. So I did some searching. This is all public data and it should be somewhere. Well, after some intense searching, I found it. My plan is to parse the data and load into an object database and host it in the "cloud" (azure/google/aws).

Now for the important stuff. Links to the data.

Federal: https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators 

Federal and States: https://github.com/openstates/people/tree/main

I haven't started work on it yet, but it seems straight forward.

I'd love to hear what everyone else is doing.

Good luck!

[Kalan Foster]

Hi Everyone, 

In light of Representative API shutting down, our team is here to support you with officeholder data. We have a dedicated group of 70 researchers and 40 full-time team members diligently collecting and aggregating data all the way down to the school board level. We offer standardized exports and API access for our existing products and services. Understanding that this was previously a free service, our team has created new packages with that in mind. 

Our officeholders dataset includes records of over 300,000 term dates, contact information (email and phone), mailing addresses, official government websites, social media links, and the party affiliation of each candidate. Each record also features identifiers for state, government level, and position category, making it easy for you to find the offices that matter most to your organization.

If you would like to learn more, please use this form to request additional information - https://organizations.ballotready.org/data-products-request-a-demo

Best, 

Kalan

[Emil Guareno]

Thanks for sharing, we currently have integrations for both Congress.gov and Openstates but what is missing is the local officials which is where Google Civic API was really helpful. 

Not sure if you've found a source of data for local officials but let us know if that's the case. I believe that data is a lot harder to accrue as they are gathered from thousands of different local government websites.

Once I find a source for this data I'm planning to build it out and provide it for free as well through either REST APIs or GraphQL. 

Best of luck as well!

[bob woodward]

Thanks, Emil! good luck! when I get time, I going to look at how the data is scraped ( https://github.com/openstates/openstates-scrapers/tree/main ) and see if I can add more data for a specific state. If I can, perhaps others will join in and do other states.

[Civic Data]

Thank you for the questions regarding flat file access to Governance Project data. Sharing details on timeline and next steps below:

• Confirming that CTCL is not standing up an API of its Governance Project data. Users interested in accessing elected officeholder data in an API should consult alternative data vendors. Alternative data vendors that offer officeholder data in their respective APIs include: BallotReady, Ballotpedia, and Cicero.
• CTCL is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization that connects Americans with the information they need to become and remain civically engaged, and ensure that our elections are more professional, inclusive, and secure. CTCL grants mission-aligned nonpartisan organizations that seek to use its data for charitable and educational purposes access to its datasets on a sliding scale.
• Organizations interested in obtaining access to CTCL’s Governance Project data in XML or .txt files (or any other CTCL dataset) will need to submit a data request form. Data requests will be vetted for organizational mission alignment and use consistent with CTCL’s charitable and educational purposes. Accepted requests will have the option of obtaining data on a sliding scale, and declined requests will need to consult alternative data vendors.
• For those who have already submitted a data request for Governance Project data and indicated interest in flat files, we will respond to your request after the November election. As our team is focused on the general election, communication and response to ongoing requests may take longer than usual.

If you have any additional questions about Governance Project data access, please get in touch directly by emailing data[at]techandciviclife.org. 

-CTCL Civic Information Team

[Nick O'Neill]

5 Calls also has a free location-to-representatives API: https://5calls.org/representatives-api/

Some benefits include very flexible location params (zip, zip+4, lat/long, address, cross streets, etc) and an open legislator dataset (https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators) that we contribute to and read from, which makes update timelines very transparent.

Nick

[Ken Carbullido]

Ballotpedia does provide officeholder data via an API.   We are happy to work with organizations and individuals who have been using the Representatives API for officeholder data.   The quality and timeliness of our data is unmatched, as we have a staff of 80 researchers, writers, and technology professionals committed to publishing facts in the Ballotpedia online encyclopedia of U.S. politics. We provide comprehensive election and officeholder coverage for all federal elections and offices, all statewide elections and offices, and the elections and offices in the top 100 U.S. cities by population. We also offer election and office coverage for 32 additional state capitals.  We continue to grow our coverage for local elections nationwide, but have not yet provided general API access to this next level of nationwide local election data.  You can learn more about our API, the Current Officeholder and other endpoints here.  

If you are interested in using the Ballotpedia API, please email da...@ballotpedia.org for more information, and specifically mention that you have been using the Representatives API, so we can ensure your inquiries are routed appropriately.

Thank you,

Ken Carbullido Vice President of Election Product and Technology Strategy Mobile: 402-321-3849   BALLOTPEDIA Donate, Follow, Like, Advertise & Subscribe Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics Home of 400,000 articles and counting.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-civicinfo...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/f8aef616-f541-4f8a-9b74-cc7acfcf8c78n%40googlegroups.com.

[Google Civic Information API]

Update: To ease the transition to other providers of representation data, we’ve launched a new divisionByAddress endpoint. This new endpoint can be used to look up the current Open Civic Data Identifiers (OCD-IDs) for a given address. The OCD-IDs can then be used to lookup information like Offices and Representatives in 3rd party datasets. For more information, see the announcement post.

- Google Civic Information API team

[Rebecca Womack]

Hi all,

I’m chiming in with a brief introduction to Cicero. Our REST API matches locations to thousands of officeholders and districts. In addition to national and state data, we have data for over 400 cities and counties in the United States. Our team closely monitors changes to officeholders and their info (contact, social media, committee assignments) on a daily basis - not just following regular elections.

We also closely track routine and ad hoc redistricting. Our new parent company, Melissa Data, has decades of experience in address and geospatial information so Cicero’s political boundary data is as accurate as it gets. Our API allows for highly precise location-based lookups (full address, zip code, lat/long); results include district OCD-IDs. Full API documentation is here. Our transparent API pricing includes discounts for nonprofits, academic and government organizations. In addition to offering a free trial, we are exploring the implementation of a program that would give organizations a small bucket of free credits every month.

If you have any questions, please contact us at cic...@cicerodata.com.

Thank you,

Rebecca Womack

Cicero Product Manager

[Chad Wood]

Hi all, 

Just chiming in with some requirements. We're using the representatives API to get the district numbers (assembly, congressional, and legislative district numbers) in a normalized format for any given address. To be frank, we don't care for the representative names, just the district numbers that pertain to a given address.

If anyone is aware of a single service, paid or otherwise, that can replace this capability--it would be very much appreciated. Many alternatives seem to provide the representatives, but not the district numbers. We need the reverse of that.

[Stephanie Thome]

Hi Chad,

The Cicero API legislative_district endpoint returns the district numbers of all levels of districts for a given address (Federal, state legislative, and local). Here's a link to the free trial if you want to check it out. And feel free to email if you have any questions: cic...@cicerodata.com

Thanks,

Stephanie Thome

[bob woodward]

hi, chad!

the us census bureau offers an api service that might be what you need. https://www.census.gov/data/developers/geography/about-geography.html

good luck!

here's a simple call - https://geocoding.geo.census.gov/geocoder/geographies/onelineaddress?address=1600%2Bpennsylvania%2Bave.%2Bwashington%20dc.%2020001&benchmark=2020&vintage=2020&format=json

{
"result": {
"input": {
"address": {
"address": "1600+pennsylvania+ave.+washington dc. 20001"
},
"vintage": {
"isDefault": true,
"id": "2020",
"vintageName": "Census2020_Census2020",
"vintageDescription": "Census 2020 Vintage - Census 2020 Benchmark"
},
"benchmark": {
"isDefault": false,
"benchmarkDescription": "Public Address Ranges - Census 2020 Benchmark",
"id": "2020",
"benchmarkName": "Public_AR_Census2020"
}
},
"addressMatches": [
{
"tigerLine": {
"side": "L",
"tigerLineId": "76240366"
},
"geographies": {
"State Legislative Districts - Upper": [
{
"POP100": 108202,
"GEOID": "11006",
"CENTLAT": "+38.8867641",
"AREAWATER": 1290222,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "6",
"OID": "212904689769622",
"LSADC": "L1",
"SLDU": "006",
"FUNCSTAT": "N",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.8866683",
"NAME": "Ward 6",
"OBJECTID": 753,
"CENTLON": "-077.0027481",
"LSY": "2018",
"HU100": 66473,
"AREALAND": 14831121,
"INTPTLON": "-077.0028435",
"MTFCC": "G5210",
"LDTYP": "O"
}
],
"States": [
{
"STATENS": "01702382",
"POP100": 689545,
"GEOID": "11",
"CENTLAT": "+38.9047587",
"AREAWATER": 18709762,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "District of Columbia",
"STUSAB": "DC",
"OID": "27490331294090",
"LSADC": "00",
"FUNCSTAT": "A",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.9042474",
"DIVISION": "5",
"NAME": "District of Columbia",
"REGION": "3",
"OBJECTID": 13,
"CENTLON": "-077.0162860",
"AREALAND": 158316124,
"INTPTLON": "-077.0165167",
"HU100": 350364,
"MTFCC": "G4000",
"UR": "U"
}
],
"Combined Statistical Areas": [
{
"POP100": 9973383,
"GEOID": "548",
"CENTLAT": "+39.0282791",
"AREAWATER": 4067866689,
"BASENAME": "Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA",
"OID": "2619013782255247",
"LSADC": "M0",
"FUNCSTAT": "S",
"INTPTLAT": "+39.0246056",
"NAME": "Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA CSA",
"CSA": "548",
"OBJECTID": 103,
"CENTLON": "-077.3083318",
"HU100": 4006033,
"AREALAND": 32735838394,
"INTPTLON": "-077.3105306",
"MTFCC": "G3100"
}
],
"2020 Urban Areas - Corrected": [
{
"GEOID": "92242",
"CENTLAT": "+38.8953362",
"AREAWATER": 67538846,
"BASENAME": "Washington--Arlington, DC--VA--MD",
"OID": "27021158105937",
"UA": "92242",
"LSADC": "67",
"FUNCSTAT": "S",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.8959429",
"NAME": "Washington--Arlington, DC--VA--MD Urban Area",
"OBJECTID": 612,
"CENTLON": "-077.1822188",
"AREALAND": 3352762591,
"INTPTLON": "-077.1830768",
"MTFCC": "G3500"
}
],
"County Subdivisions": [
{
"COUSUB": "50000",
"POP100": 689545,
"GEOID": "1100150000",
"CENTLAT": "+38.9047587",
"AREAWATER": 18709762,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "Washington",
"OID": "27690331274806",
"LSADC": "25",
"FUNCSTAT": "F",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.9042474",
"NAME": "Washington city",
"OBJECTID": 28916,
"CENTLON": "-077.0162860",
"COUSUBCC": "C5",
"HU100": 350364,
"AREALAND": 158316124,
"INTPTLON": "-077.0165167",
"MTFCC": "G4040",
"COUSUBNS": "02390665",
"UR": "U",
"COUNTY": "001"
}
],
"Incorporated Places": [
{
"NECTAPCI": "N",
"POP100": 689545,
"GEOID": "1150000",
"CENTLAT": "+38.9047587",
"AREAWATER": 18709762,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "Washington",
"OID": "27890331283927",
"LSADC": "25",
"PLACE": "50000",
"FUNCSTAT": "N",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.9042474",
"NAME": "Washington city",
"OBJECTID": 7087,
"PLACECC": "C5",
"CENTLON": "-077.0162860",
"CBSAPCI": "Y",
"HU100": 350364,
"AREALAND": 158316124,
"INTPTLON": "-077.0165167",
"PLACENS": "02390665",
"MTFCC": "G4110",
"UR": "U"
}
],
"Counties": [
{
"POP100": 689545,
"GEOID": "11001",
"CENTLAT": "+38.9047587",
"AREAWATER": 18709762,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "District of Columbia",
"OID": "27590331264532",
"LSADC": "00",
"FUNCSTAT": "F",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.9042474",
"NAME": "District of Columbia",
"OBJECTID": 564,
"CENTLON": "-077.0162860",
"COUNTYCC": "H6",
"COUNTYNS": "01702382",
"AREALAND": 158316124,
"INTPTLON": "-077.0165167",
"HU100": 350364,
"MTFCC": "G4020",
"UR": "U",
"COUNTY": "001"
}
],
"116th Congressional Districts": [
{
"POP100": 689545,
"GEOID": "1198",
"CENTLAT": "+38.9047587",
"CDSESSN": "116",
"AREAWATER": 18709762,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "Delegate District (at Large)",
"OID": "211904692355590",
"LSADC": "C4",
"FUNCSTAT": "N",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.9042474",
"NAME": "Delegate District (at Large)",
"OBJECTID": 334,
"CENTLON": "-077.0162860",
"HU100": 350364,
"AREALAND": 158316124,
"INTPTLON": "-077.0165167",
"CD116": "98",
"MTFCC": "G5200"
}
],
"Census Tracts": [
{
"POP100": 2580,
"GEOID": "11001006802",
"CENTLAT": "+38.8832158",
"AREAWATER": 0,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "68.02",
"OID": "20790331304268",
"LSADC": "CT",
"FUNCSTAT": "S",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.8832158",
"NAME": "Census Tract 68.02",
"OBJECTID": 56719,
"TRACT": "006802",
"CENTLON": "-076.9814483",
"HU100": 1206,
"AREALAND": 280108,
"INTPTLON": "-076.9814483",
"MTFCC": "G5020",
"UR": "U",
"COUNTY": "001"
}
],
"Census Blocks": [
{
"SUFFIX": "",
"POP100": 273,
"GEOID": "110010068022012",
"CENTLAT": "+38.8798010",
"BLOCK": "2012",
"AREAWATER": 0,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "2012",
"OID": "210701008442682",
"LSADC": "BK",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.8798010",
"FUNCSTAT": "S",
"NAME": "Block 2012",
"OBJECTID": 8109426,
"TRACT": "006802",
"CENTLON": "-076.9828471",
"BLKGRP": "2",
"AREALAND": 14076,
"HU100": 183,
"INTPTLON": "-076.9828471",
"MTFCC": "G5040",
"LWBLKTYP": "L",
"UR": "U",
"COUNTY": "001"
}
]
},
"coordinates": {
"x": -76.983558421656,
"y": 38.879710503233
},
"addressComponents": {
"zip": "20003",
"streetName": "PENNSYLVANIA",
"preType": "",
"city": "WASHINGTON",
"preDirection": "",
"suffixDirection": "SE",
"fromAddress": "1600",
"state": "DC",
"suffixType": "AVE",
"toAddress": "1550",
"suffixQualifier": "",
"preQualifier": ""
},
"matchedAddress": "1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVE SE, WASHINGTON, DC, 20003"
},
{
"tigerLine": {
"side": "L",
"tigerLineId": "76225813"
},
"geographies": {
"State Legislative Districts - Upper": [
{
"POP100": 81904,
"GEOID": "11002",
"CENTLAT": "+38.8932382",
"AREAWATER": 5945989,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "2",
"OID": "212904689769535",
"LSADC": "L1",
"SLDU": "002",
"FUNCSTAT": "N",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.8926196",
"NAME": "Ward 2",
"OBJECTID": 719,
"CENTLON": "-077.0433019",
"LSY": "2018",
"HU100": 49099,
"AREALAND": 16541236,
"INTPTLON": "-077.0427418",
"MTFCC": "G5210",
"LDTYP": "O"
}
],
"States": [
{
"STATENS": "01702382",
"POP100": 689545,
"GEOID": "11",
"CENTLAT": "+38.9047587",
"AREAWATER": 18709762,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "District of Columbia",
"STUSAB": "DC",
"OID": "27490331294090",
"LSADC": "00",
"FUNCSTAT": "A",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.9042474",
"DIVISION": "5",
"NAME": "District of Columbia",
"REGION": "3",
"OBJECTID": 13,
"CENTLON": "-077.0162860",
"AREALAND": 158316124,
"INTPTLON": "-077.0165167",
"HU100": 350364,
"MTFCC": "G4000",
"UR": "U"
}
],
"Combined Statistical Areas": [
{
"POP100": 9973383,
"GEOID": "548",
"CENTLAT": "+39.0282791",
"AREAWATER": 4067866689,
"BASENAME": "Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA",
"OID": "2619013782255247",
"LSADC": "M0",
"FUNCSTAT": "S",
"INTPTLAT": "+39.0246056",
"NAME": "Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA CSA",
"CSA": "548",
"OBJECTID": 103,
"CENTLON": "-077.3083318",
"HU100": 4006033,
"AREALAND": 32735838394,
"INTPTLON": "-077.3105306",
"MTFCC": "G3100"
}
],
"2020 Urban Areas - Corrected": [
{
"GEOID": "92242",
"CENTLAT": "+38.8953362",
"AREAWATER": 67538846,
"BASENAME": "Washington--Arlington, DC--VA--MD",
"OID": "27021158105937",
"UA": "92242",
"LSADC": "67",
"FUNCSTAT": "S",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.8959429",
"NAME": "Washington--Arlington, DC--VA--MD Urban Area",
"OBJECTID": 612,
"CENTLON": "-077.1822188",
"AREALAND": 3352762591,
"INTPTLON": "-077.1830768",
"MTFCC": "G3500"
}
],
"County Subdivisions": [
{
"COUSUB": "50000",
"POP100": 689545,
"GEOID": "1100150000",
"CENTLAT": "+38.9047587",
"AREAWATER": 18709762,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "Washington",
"OID": "27690331274806",
"LSADC": "25",
"FUNCSTAT": "F",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.9042474",
"NAME": "Washington city",
"OBJECTID": 28916,
"CENTLON": "-077.0162860",
"COUSUBCC": "C5",
"HU100": 350364,
"AREALAND": 158316124,
"INTPTLON": "-077.0165167",
"MTFCC": "G4040",
"COUSUBNS": "02390665",
"UR": "U",
"COUNTY": "001"
}
],
"Incorporated Places": [
{
"NECTAPCI": "N",
"POP100": 689545,
"GEOID": "1150000",
"CENTLAT": "+38.9047587",
"AREAWATER": 18709762,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "Washington",
"OID": "27890331283927",
"LSADC": "25",
"PLACE": "50000",
"FUNCSTAT": "N",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.9042474",
"NAME": "Washington city",
"OBJECTID": 7087,
"PLACECC": "C5",
"CENTLON": "-077.0162860",
"CBSAPCI": "Y",
"HU100": 350364,
"AREALAND": 158316124,
"INTPTLON": "-077.0165167",
"PLACENS": "02390665",
"MTFCC": "G4110",
"UR": "U"
}
],
"Counties": [
{
"POP100": 689545,
"GEOID": "11001",
"CENTLAT": "+38.9047587",
"AREAWATER": 18709762,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "District of Columbia",
"OID": "27590331264532",
"LSADC": "00",
"FUNCSTAT": "F",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.9042474",
"NAME": "District of Columbia",
"OBJECTID": 564,
"CENTLON": "-077.0162860",
"COUNTYCC": "H6",
"COUNTYNS": "01702382",
"AREALAND": 158316124,
"INTPTLON": "-077.0165167",
"HU100": 350364,
"MTFCC": "G4020",
"UR": "U",
"COUNTY": "001"
}
],
"116th Congressional Districts": [
{
"POP100": 689545,
"GEOID": "1198",
"CENTLAT": "+38.9047587",
"CDSESSN": "116",
"AREAWATER": 18709762,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "Delegate District (at Large)",
"OID": "211904692355590",
"LSADC": "C4",
"FUNCSTAT": "N",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.9042474",
"NAME": "Delegate District (at Large)",
"OBJECTID": 334,
"CENTLON": "-077.0162860",
"HU100": 350364,
"AREALAND": 158316124,
"INTPTLON": "-077.0165167",
"CD116": "98",
"MTFCC": "G5200"
}
],
"Census Tracts": [
{
"POP100": 176,
"GEOID": "11001980000",
"CENTLAT": "+38.8801546",
"AREAWATER": 4996439,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "9800",
"OID": "2079015504267431",
"LSADC": "CT",
"FUNCSTAT": "S",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.8809933",
"NAME": "Census Tract 9800",
"OBJECTID": 19992,
"TRACT": "980000",
"CENTLON": "-077.0352173",
"HU100": 12,
"AREALAND": 6514228,
"INTPTLON": "-077.0363219",
"MTFCC": "G5020",
"UR": "U",
"COUNTY": "001"
}
],
"Census Blocks": [
{
"SUFFIX": "",
"POP100": 10,
"GEOID": "110019800001034",
"CENTLAT": "+38.8970383",
"BLOCK": "1034",
"AREAWATER": 0,
"STATE": "11",
"BASENAME": "1034",
"OID": "210701008444240",
"LSADC": "BK",
"INTPTLAT": "+38.8970383",
"FUNCSTAT": "S",
"NAME": "Block 1034",
"OBJECTID": 4333035,
"TRACT": "980000",
"CENTLON": "-077.0372535",
"BLKGRP": "1",
"AREALAND": 144892,
"HU100": 3,
"INTPTLON": "-077.0372535",
"MTFCC": "G5040",
"LWBLKTYP": "L",
"UR": "U",
"COUNTY": "001"
}
]
},
"coordinates": {
"x": -77.03518753691,
"y": 38.89869893252
},
"addressComponents": {
"zip": "20500",
"streetName": "PENNSYLVANIA",
"preType": "",
"city": "WASHINGTON",
"preDirection": "",
"suffixDirection": "NW",
"fromAddress": "1600",
"state": "DC",
"suffixType": "AVE",
"toAddress": "1698",
"suffixQualifier": "",
"preQualifier": ""
},
"matchedAddress": "1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVE NW, WASHINGTON, DC, 20500"
}
]
}
}

[Matt Latourelle]

Hello,

Ballotpedia also provides a paid API subscription that can facilitate these types of calls: https://developer.ballotpedia.org/#districts. I think the benefit of using a group like Ballotpedia or Cicero over the Census would be if you need up-to-date redistricting information. Although unlike Cicero we are just acceping a lat/long point rather than a street address, so the geocoding would have to be done separately. 

[Brian Hedden]

Thanks for sharing these link, Bob!  I am launching a non-partisan, non-toxic, political social media and ballot app: https://stump.vote/ We are looking for developers if you're qualified and interested!

Long live civic tech!

Brian Hedden

[bob woodward]

Brian,

You're more than welcome!

Thanks for the offer! I'm more than qualified. And I'm very modest!  :) But I just retired last year and my better half has laid down the law. I can only work on my mobile apps (I've never given them the attention they deserve while employed) and only for a certain number of hours per week. "Meet the boss. Same as the old boss."

Good luck on your venture. I signed up.

[bob woodward]

Hi!

How's everybody doing prepping for the representatives api shutdown? Anybody have any issues preventing a solution? Any novel solutions you'd like to share?

[Joseph Elfelt]

This ArcGIS layer has the current US House districts and lots of info on each house member.

https://services.arcgis.com/xOi1kZaI0eWDREZv/ArcGIS/rest/services/NTAD_Congressional_Districts/FeatureServer

This link will download that data as GeoJSON.  This may take a few seconds.

https://services.arcgis.com/xOi1kZaI0eWDREZv/ArcGIS/rest/services/NTAD_Congressional_Districts/FeatureServer/0/query?where=1=1&outSR=4326&outFields=*&f=geojson

Joseph Elfelt

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-civicinfo...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/7aab3f8e-ab03-4642-ad43-659f2570b774n%40googlegroups.com.

[Jim Cupples]

Hi all,

A friend of mine and I are developing a crowd sourced tool for representative data up and down the ballot.

Most of the elected data we can get through scraping tools, and for the remainders the plan is to ask citizens around the country to contribute. It will be Open Data for officeholder information and shapefiles/maps.

A few years ago we created a tool called All The Farms and although that wasn't the breakout hit we hoped for, we have been able to white label it for other purposes.

Many years ago (10?) I cofounded Run For Office, which was the first to make all school board seats in the country available to everyone. That site as address searchable and after doing similar projects with universities (Portland State and Berkeley) I teamed up with NationBuilder to launch/scale the site.

Please get in touch if you have questions, as we'd like to make sure we get as close as possible to a widely used project from the beginning - jimcu...@gmail.com

Cheers,

Jim

[Jim Cupples]

Garbled some of the language on that as I'm rushing around my kitchen to get ready for a 9am meeting, but I hope the overall message is clear.

Address Searchable. Up and Down the Ballot. Open Data API.

[Eric Rosenfeld]

Hey Everyone,

With the Google Civic API shutting down, I’m excited to introduce ChangeUs.org, a civic engagement platform designed to go deeper and provide more detailed, comprehensive government data.

I developed a patent-pending method for data aggregation and civic engagement that collects information from city, county, state, and federal governments, offering far more detail than existing sources like Google Civic. I will be releasing the new searching algorithim for 2025 soon.

Here’s what sets ChangeUs apart:

• Data not just for representatives down to the city level but also for organizations, committees, departments, agencies, and more.
• Detailed profiles with voting histories, parent offices, contact methods, personal websites etc.
• Legislation data ranging from federal bills to county ordinances, all aggregated and updated automatically.

The MVP of ChangeUs focuses on helping users quickly find the proper entities to contact based on their concerns, whether it’s a representative, agency, or organization.

This is just the beginning, and I’m excited to share more incredible features soon. I’d love your feedback and ideas—let’s collaborate to make civic engagement easier and more effective for everyone.

Check it out at ChangeUs.org.

Best,
Eric 

Developer and Founder

[Emil Guareno]

Hi Brian, love what you're doing. I'm actually working on a similar platform with a couple of people. It's called Uproot (https://uproot.co). Would love to meet and discuss how we can collaborate together on this important mission. You can reach me at emilg...@gmail.com.

[Joseph Elfelt]

For anyone doing a map I can contribute javascript for the geolocation API.

Joseph Elfelt

On Thu, Jan 23, 2025 at 7:18 AM bob woodward <robert.f...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Kalan Foster]

Hey Everyone,

Quick update—we’ve refreshed our officeholder data and we're covering around 100,000 positions for the 2025 elections. You can check out our datasets here: BallotReady Data Sets.

Here’s what’s included:

✅ 300,000+ records
✅ Contact info (email & phone)
✅ Mailing addresses
✅ Official websites & social media links
✅ Party affiliation
✅ Easy-to-use identifiers (state, government level, position category)

Also, if you want to keep track of the elections happening this year, here's the link to our 2025 election calendar - BallotReady Election Calendar. 

Let us know if you have any questions—we’re happy to help!

Best,
Kalan

[Kas Stohr]

Very excited by all the new civic apps coming to market. There are a number of existing apps as well. I work for one joinunified.us that has thousands of users and supports activists and organizers. joinunified.us. (Check it out. https://www.joinunified.us/)

However.... 

It would be great if folks could share info on replacing GoogleCivic API rather than apps that use such data. Many of us are users of the api... and need to migrate to a new data source.  Ballotpedia, BallotReady are great, but they come at a cost and the structure of the data (last I evaluated both platforms) is different. So, the change comes with additional development overhead.

Wondering if there are free civic data API alternatives that are 1) Free or very low cost. 2) make use of OCDids and 3) and are similar in structure to GoogleCivic API? (i.e. address lookup returns a list of nested OCDids, and elections, public offices, public officials are linked by OCDid.) 

[bob woodward]

hi Kas!

I've not found a free or low cost api for civic data. I'm using the address lookup from the us census bureau and civic data from open states. see my previous post(s) for details. my application is in prod and I'm satisfied with the results. I just wish there were more local data.

[Frank Gould]

Hello everyone,

I am looking for a source of US elected officials records to display to local activists. I tried Ballotready, Stump, and Changeus but haven't received any responses. Are there any recommendations for contacting these organizations or others?

Regards,
Frank Gould

[Charles Roth]

Has anyone successfully gotten data from the Governance project?

I've reached out to them, multiple times, and I haven't heard a single word back.

[Charles Roth]

Hey, Google -- please note that the VERY FIRST POST in this thread has a link, purportedly to the Governance Project -- except it doesn't point there, it points to THIS VERY SAME PAGE.  Please fix this.

[Jim Cupples]

Hi Charles,

You've probably seen this, but here's the page for the Governance Project: https://www.techandciviclife.org/our-work/civic-information/our-data/governance-project/#

It's run by the Center for Tech and Civic Life but I have honestly never seen such a well funded non-profit that is so underwhelming and delivers so little.

Attached is their most recent publicly available non-profit filing which puts them at $80M for their net assets.

If they did what they claim to do (datasets of elected officials) there would be no reason for BallotReady, Ballotpedia, and all the other efforts.

I'd love to know how it goes if you hit them up for meaningful data, so please keep us posted.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/a9d73832-4af7-4324-ac59-5984986d10can%40googlegroups.com.

[Charles Roth]

Hi Jim -- thanks.  Yes, I'm already familiar with that page.  I've requested access several times over the last few months, and gotten no replies whatsoever.

I just emailed the two addresses I could find (he...@techandciviclife.org and da...@techandciviclife.org), asking them about this -- and in particular about what their "usage guidelines" are.

(And pointed out an error on their page https://www.techandciviclife.org/our-work/civic-information/our-data/governance-project, where they formatted the mailto: link wrong!  <Sigh/>)

I'll post whatever I learn, here.  (He said, hopefully.)

[kevinj...@gmail.com]

I've also requested access tothis data as welll and received no response. I thouyght it was maybe a me thing, but maybe it's a broader issue. If this is the organization that has been entrusted to take over, and they're not responsive, then definitely a major issue.

[Ryan Parker]

FYI The Governance Project decided not to pursue the API project. This was the email they sent me back in September of 2024.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alicja Nutting <ali...@techandciviclife.org>
Date: Sep 13, 2024 at 7:00 AM -0500
To: Ryan Parker <ryanp...@congress.wiki>
Subject: 2025 API update

Hi there,

Thank you again for expressing your interest in our Governance Project data. I'm following up to update that after careful consideration, we've decided to not stand up our Governance Project data in an API. 

In light of the Google Civic Information API sunsetting its coverage of representative data, we'd like to share BallotReady, Ballotpedia, and Cicero as alternative data vendors that offer officeholder data and candidate data in their respective APIs. 

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Sincerely,

the CTCL Civic Information Team

--

Alicja Nutting (she/her) Associate Director of Civic Information

Center for Tech and Civic Life

DeBary, FL Website: www.techandciviclife.org

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/google-civicinfo-api/9fwFn-dhktA/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to google-civicinfo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/ca2669c3-43e7-490e-b6f3-9c197c32a0dfn%40googlegroups.com.

[kevinj...@gmail.com]

We know that they're not going to offer an API, but it would be nice if they would respond to requests for the underlying data.

[Civic Data]

• For folks inquiring about accessing Governance Project data, kindly re-upping our post last September, where we shared that CTCL is not standing up an API of its Governance Project data and directed folks to some alternative data vendors.
• In addition, we are not pursuing new data partnerships at this time. CTCL is prioritizing nonpartisan research initiatives centered around election administration and civic participation. We will update our webpage this year around these topics.

-CTCL Civic Information Team

[Charles Roth]

It looks as though I/we finally got through to them -- perhaps pointing out the error in their own mailto: address helped!  :-) :-)

They sent me a polite reply, and then posted the above.  But it basically means "no, you cannot get the data, you have to buy it from the existing 'alternative data vendors'."

My particular organization both uses some Google Civic API data (presumably thus from the CTCL) and crowd-sources other data, through county-level volunteers.  So we have some data they don't have.  I've offered CTCL a "win-win" of 'our data for your data' for Michigan.  I'll be curious to see if/how they reply.

We (my org) are considering standing up a FREE download of the entire Michigan elected officials data, once we have integrated all of our sources and corrections from the last election cycle. At the risk of hyperbole, democracy itself seems threatened right now in the US.  This seems like a time when this data should be MORE available, not LESS.

Google, are you listening?

If there's anyone else here from Michigan with an interest, please feel free to email me directly at wcha...@gmail.com.  I'd also be interested in hearing from people in other states who may have similar situations.

[Charles Roth]

P.S. Google seems insistent on masking my email address, even though I said "yes, mother" to posting it.   Hoping this form will make it through -- wchasroth AT gmail.com.

[Jim Cupples]

Charles,

Doing all of Michigan's elected officials is very manageable and I'd be happy to help.

There's 83 counties in Michigan and the county is the entity that has the most data on local elections.

With a few volunteers and a data engineer, you're set. You need to set up a methodical system of contacting each county election office regarding recent elections they've administered or had reported to them.

Let me know if you want to jump on a Zoom to discuss. You can also get all of the relevant political boundary maps in shapefile format from the census TIGER file - cities, counties, school districts, etc. The only time the boundary maps are difficult is when they're special districts, but those often follow similar boundaries to other jurisdictions.

I did this kind of stuff for five years and we did it all over the country. I also have a list of all Michigan school board members but it's outdated by a few years. It still has all of the school districts and will allow you to understand what the board looks like in terms of number of members and election cadence.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/020bb12d-5cef-4438-b413-24c7a7e44b90n%40googlegroups.com.

[Jim Cupples]

I would encourage you to share what data you collect with other non-profits and creating a data co-op. That way you can share data and best practices. You'll have a better dataset than the vendors quickly.

The vendors hire lots of people to manually collect the data, which is tremendously outdated. You sometimes will need to file a FOIA but if you're patient and have a systematic approach, you'll be in great shape.

Most of the vendors have taken on venture capital, so they're forced to charge a lot for the data and along with venture capital they have bloated teams/management. You won't have to deal with that with a nimble and focused non-profit.

[Kas Stohr]

I noticed Ballotpedia and BallotReady on this thread. To help us all understand and estimate the time it will take to refactor our code to potentially transition to one of your data sets, is it possible to please provide a small csv of sample data that is representative of data at the most granular level you offer (i.e. it's not helpful to get congressional reps, county level or city level is more helpful.)? 

Additionally, it would be great if you could answer as many of the following questions as is possible in the group forum. 

1. How is the data structured? Are OCDid's included? If not, how are representatives linked to the districts they represent in the data? How are new incumbents linked to existing offices? 
2. What additional information is provided about the office (contact info, website, address, social profiles)? 
3. What additional information is provided about the representative (campaign contact info,  website, personal socials?) 
4. What is the turn around time post-election for updating incumbent data? (i.e for a state primary in March, when would we reasonably expect up-to-date data for new incumbents in the data set?)  How are data updates communicated to clients? 
5. What is the coverage? I.e. to what level of granularity do you guarantee coverage? Municipal? Parcel? School Board coverage? (I know BallotReady did provide this info...tks!) 
   
   

Asking the questions here so that all of us have the benefit of the answers as we make decisions about how to move forward. 

Many kind thanks. 

[Kalan Foster]

Sure, the BallotReady team can put something together. Does anyone else have suggestions? 

[Nicholas Roberts]

interesting update Kalan, afaik you have doubled the number of public officials / offices that Google API covered

is that true? could you explain the delta? where did you find the offices / officials?

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/2e575383-8dc4-49c2-ba07-621073f8780en%40googlegroups.com.

[Kalan Foster]

BallotReady focuses on local elections, including special district positions, to ensure every race is contested. Our mission is to shine a light on elections that often go unnoticed amid higher-profile races. We believe every election matters and that everyone should have a voice in what happens in their own backyard. Last year we clocked in 26,000 research hours. Sometimes you have to send a fax, or make a phone call, or show up in person lol. But we work really hard to find this data. 

[Charles Roth]

Just a reminder (especially to the companies that are following along here) -- Google IS GOING TO OBFUSCATE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESSES!   (Even if you tell Google it's ok to publish your address -- it obfuscates it regardless, which is weird.)

That's a "feature", but if you want us to be able to reach you via email, you'll need to post it like I did.  E.g. MyEmailName AT mycompany.com.

[Steve Anderson]

what is the specific day that the google api will be shut down?  I just see "in April" which is vague. 

[Jim Cupples]

If you don't have competing areas and/or mission statements, why wouldn't the non-profits and other entities on here pool their resources and get this data yourselves?

There are constraints when you buy data from vendors - often you cannot share it with others. Plus it costs a lot of money.

Election and officeholder data is gathered by scraping websites and contacting county election offices. Sometimes you have to dig a little more and contact a special district directly.

If you have volunteers, this is very doable, and you can do whatever you want with the data.

Unless you have a gigantic budget and money to burn, I don't know why you wouldn't work together on collecting the data. Deciding on the standard data format (conventions, identifiers, what is being captured, etc) is the most difficult part but that's where being a professional comes in.

What am I missing? There is nothing proprietary about this data and you're not splitting the atom. A good data engineer that knows how to scrape (which all of the vendors do) and the rest is the elbow grease of contacting election offices.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/fee30c26-b963-42be-b677-138f02823680n%40googlegroups.com.

[Matt Latourelle]

Since someone asked some questions about Ballotpedia data, I'll chime in from our end briefly to try to answer.

We cover officeholders and elections for all federal, statewide, and state legislative positions, as well as locally for any offices within or overlapping the top 100 cities by population. https://ballotpedia.org/Elections_editorial_approach

Like BallotReady, we're working on expanding our down-ballot elections coverage, and we are pursuing that by-state, but we are not providing that local coverage for officeholders yet.

We do comprehensive research into contact information (emails, websites, social media, etc.) for the state legislative offices and up. Incumbent data is updated post-election based on their swearing-in date.

You can find more examples about data structure and what outputs to expect here <https://developer.ballotpedia.org/>, or we also provide csv files. Here is a sample file including what we have as of today for Wisconsin local officeholders: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r2fkAjziOzuWte6TaMYUStgB4kaOrv06/view?usp=sharing

Also, to Jim's point, we're always open to discussing mutually-beneficial partnerships. You can reach me/us at: data AT ballotpedia.org

[Aviva Rosman]

Hi Kas, thanks so much for sending questions over! Please see BallotReady's answers below. 

In terms of better understanding the API, I would recommend reaching out for a free test key. We can also provide a free data sample and data dictionary, but since our exports differ from the API, we've found that can cause additional confusion for teams. 

Thanks again for raising this for the group - if others have follow ups, feel free to reach out directly or ask them here.

Aviva

—-

What is the structure of the data in the API?

Our current API structure is available here: https://developers.civicengine.com/docs/api/graphql

How are new incumbents linked to existing offices?

Offices are Position objects and individuals are represented as a Person object in the API.  When a person is elected into a position, we create an OfficeHolder object that ties them to that position.  Each OfficeHolder record has startAt and endAt values that indicate when the person’s term in that position starts and ends.  For convenience, the officeHolders query also has an isCurrent filter that allows for only showing officeholder records that represent people actively in office at the time of execution.

How are representatives linked to the districts they represent in the data?

Representatives are linked to districts they represent using our geospatial data. BallotReady has prioritized collecting over 10,000 unique shapefiles not available via the Census to ensure accurate district and subdistrict boundaries for downballot positions.

Users can link officeholders to districts using the officeHolders query in our API.  Most queries, including officeHolders, offer a LocationFilter that can be used to list officeHolders specific to a particular geography by filtering on an address, point (latitude/longitude pair), or zip code.  

We do not currently expose OCD IDs in our API but we are considering it.  We’d love feedback on how folks use that now to help us determine the value of that feature.

What additional information is provided about the office (contact info, website, address, social profiles)?

The OfficeHolder object documentation contains a comprehensive, updated list of fields available.

Relevant information about the position tied to an officeholder that does not change with each new holder is located on Position objects which are connected to OfficeHolder objects. The Position object documentation contains a comprehensive, updated list of fields available.

What additional information is provided about the representative (campaign contact info, website, personal socials?)

The Person object documentation contains a comprehensive, updated list of fields available.

What is the turnaround time post-election for updating incumbent data?

Our Election Results coverage allows us to update federal races within one week of the election. State-level races may take 1-2 weeks and county and municipal races can take three weeks.

In some races, these results will be updated much sooner than these benchmarks while others that are initially deemed “too-close-to-call” or which fail to provide timely official election results may take longer. Official contact information for winning officeholders is refreshed on a regular cadence.

How does BallotReady keep clients apprised of meaningful changes to the structure and availability of data in the API?

Our documentation is always programmatically updated to reflect the currently available API structure.  Furthermore, Customer Success representatives will reach out to API customers with updates pertaining to the API when we introduce important new features.  We did this recently when we introduced the address lookup to the LocationFilter.  

As a user of the API, how can I know when particular fields in the API have or have not been updated?

Most objects have updatedAt fields that indicate when they were last updated.  This will always be a reliable way to determine when any individual object was last updated.

Alternatively, several queries, like elections, have top-level filters that can be used to limit returned records to only those that have been updated relative to a provided date and time.  

What is the level of coverage?

Our mission is to make local data accessible all the way downballot.

We cover positions at the federal, state, municipal, and local level down to school board positions. You can find more information on our exact coverage and Tier system here. Our coverage calendar is the most up-to-date place to look for this information.

How can we test the data and API?

BallotReady offers free API keys for three weeks of testing. If you are interested in exploring our API or have further questions around our data, reach out and we will get you set up with a test key today.

Aviva Rosman ● COO

BallotReady

m. 617.721.2455 | e. av...@ballotready.org

w. ballotready.org

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-civicinfo-api+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/2f78f2cc-c822-4f71-ae9f-6c6af5d8cd4cn%40googlegroups.com.

[Kevin Mireles]

Aviva,

Thanks for the detailed information! As for your question about the value of exposing the OCD ID as part of your data, as a potential customer I would say it’s huge!

It’s a simple way to provide a a unique identifier for that geographic area, and to Link representatives, government, agencies, candidates, etc. to that area.

Otherwise, we need to create yet another unique identifier to link these different concepts together, since can be a Germantown Tennessee, a Germantown Maryland, a Germantown, etc., or to build logic into our systems to create an OCD ID from the information provided.

As I look at potential providers, this will be a critical part of my decision-making, so please, please include it!

Thank you!

Kev 

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/google-civicinfo-api/9fwFn-dhktA/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to google-civicinfo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/m7ukac9w.86c7fe05-f033-47ad-b744-d6ce0e351aed%40we.are.superhuman.com.

[Kas Stohr]

Thank you, Aviva for giving us the rundown on BallotReady's product. 

We use OCID IDs to map individual users to the nested set of offices and office holders that represent them by geo division. 

It makes it easy to link users to the set of representatives that represent them. 

Similarly, It makes it easy to pull up all prosecutors in any given prosecutorial district given limited address info, for example. 

Finally, it provides interoperability for civic data from multiple third-party datasets. We provide users, a wide range of civic data features, and no one dataset  supports them all. 

I strongly encourage you to include OCDids in your data. 

Thank you again for taking the time to respond. 

Kas

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/2f78f2cc-c822-4f71-ae9f-6c6af5d8cd4cn%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/google-civicinfo-api/9fwFn-dhktA/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to google-civicinfo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/m7ukac9w.86c7fe05-f033-47ad-b744-d6ce0e351aed%40we.are.superhuman.com.

[Kas Stohr]

Matt, 

Thank you for providing information on Ballotpedia's data. 

I believe we have met and talked with your team before, but just to confirm you do or do not provide OCDid attributes for offices? 

Thank you again for taking the time to respond to my questions. 

Cheers,

Kas

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/google-civicinfo-api/9fwFn-dhktA/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to google-civicinfo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/2f78f2cc-c822-4f71-ae9f-6c6af5d8cd4cn%40googlegroups.com.

[Kevin Mireles]

Completely second everything Kas said!

From: google-civ...@googlegroups.com <google-civ...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kas Stohr <k...@joinunified.us>
Date: Tuesday, March 4, 2025 at 10:45 AM
To: google-civ...@googlegroups.com <google-civ...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [google-civicinfo-api] Re: Notice of Turndown of the Representatives API

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/CAHfw2M6vCJnTiGFx2jviHO%3DyQW5m1wTriKiU4%2B9gxxU5e3OQag%40mail.gmail.com.

[Aviva Rosman]

Thank you Kevin and Kas for the feedback! It's really helpful and great timing as we're working on planning out our next cycle of engineering work this week. 

I'll circle back next week if we have more questions or an update on this feature. 

Thanks again, 

Aviva

Aviva Rosman ● COO

BallotReady

m. 617.721.2455 | e. av...@ballotready.org

w. ballotready.org

On Tue, Mar 04, 2025 at 11:02 AM, Kevin Mireles <kevinj...@gmail.com> wrote:

Completely second everything Kas said!

From: google-civicinfo-api@googlegroups.com <google-civicinfo-api@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kas Stohr <kas@joinunified.us>
Date: Tuesday, March 4, 2025 at 10:45 AM
To: google-civicinfo-api@googlegroups.com <google-civicinfo-api@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [google-civicinfo-api] Re: Notice of Turndown of the Representatives API

Thank you, Aviva for giving us the rundown on BallotReady's product. 

We use OCID IDs to map individual users to the nested set of offices and office holders that represent them by geo division. 

It makes it easy to link users to the set of representatives that represent them. 

Similarly, It makes it easy to pull up all prosecutors in any given prosecutorial district given limited address info, for example. 

Finally, it provides interoperability for civic data from multiple third-party datasets. We provide users, a wide range of civic data features, and no one dataset  supports them all. 

I strongly encourage you to include OCDids in your data. 

Thank you again for taking the time to respond. 

Kas

Aviva Rosman ● COO

BallotReady

m. 617.721.2455 | e. aviva@ballotready.org

w. ballotready.org

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-civicinfo-api+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/2f78f2cc-c822-4f71-ae9f-6c6af5d8cd4cn%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/google-civicinfo-api/9fwFn-dhktA/unsubscribe.

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to google-civicinfo-api+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/m7ukac9w.86c7fe05-f033-47ad-b744-d6ce0e351aed%40we.are.superhuman.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/google-civicinfo-api/9fwFn-dhktA/unsubscribe.

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to google-civicinfo-api+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/CAHfw2M6vCJnTiGFx2jviHO%3DyQW5m1wTriKiU4%2B9gxxU5e3OQag%40mail.gmail.com.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-civicinfo-api+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/IA1PR11MB6441062D8AB3D4CBB5788CA0FAC82%40IA1PR11MB6441.namprd11.prod.outlook.com.

[Kevin Mireles]

Great to hear! Will be a great addition and will be a key as to whom I choose to use. 

Thanks!

Kevin J Mireles

9012301048

https://calendly.com/kevinmireles

On Mar 4, 2025, at 4:30 PM, Aviva Rosman <av...@ballotready.org> wrote:



To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to google-civicinfo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/m7v03t57.1dd3a944-1363-4041-8da8-6c4cba8f9a44%40we.are.superhuman.com.

[Matt Latourelle]

Yes, Ballotpedia does provide OCD IDs.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/CAHfw2M5ZQu_D4tLva3BoQj06fNdEanRY%2BvUyfdyXpheO%3DdHHhg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Kas Stohr]

Matt,

Great to hear that Ballotpedia uses OCD IDs. Thank you. 

Kas

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/CAM%3Dis3MBgUFJ8WJVgyeeTfro2LOHN-h_-9%2B2Gbr5vuV6k2Kv2A%40mail.gmail.com.

[Nicholas Roberts]

Ballotready doubled the election officials database universe. Huge achievement and you should celebrated for that

I assume it’s also expensive and will contact your team in coming weeks

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/31cbd668-fedb-4ccd-9778-b8c3b8760d56n%40googlegroups.com.

[Charles Roth]

Kiva and Matt (in particular):

Do you include officials (and offices) below county-level officials?   

E.g. city officials, township officials, etc.  Scraping those is a ton of work across many vastly different formats -- at least for what is publicly available.  

(I can only speak authoritatively for the current state of affairs -- pun unintended -- in Michigan.)

[Matt Latourelle]

Ballotpedia currently covers offices/officeholders at all levels that overlap with one of the top 100 cities. And, for elections/candidate lists, we are doing full down-ballot coverage in 26 states so far.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/10134215-726b-4c23-ba89-d1e28a96fde3n%40googlegroups.com.

[Charles Roth]

Thanks, Matt.

(In my case, the only Michigan city in the top 100 is Detroit, so Ballotpedia wouldn't be much help.  But I appreciate the info.)

[Kas Stohr]

Google Civic Maintainers: 

We are planning for the turndown of the Representative API.  As we think about refactoring our applicaiton, we wanted to understand better what the status is of the other Google Civic Info API endpoints. 
Per your initial message: 

"There is no impact on Elections or Divisions APIs, and they will continue to be supported. " For how long will these endpoints be supported? Are there also plans to deprecate these endpoints in the future? Who/what are the underlying data providers for the information returned by these endpoints? For example, is there a third party group (Democracy Works?) that provides 'Election' endpoint data? For the Divisions endpoints, is that data solely dependent on Tiger/Census data and the OCD repo, or is there some third-party source for this data? The more clarity you can provide about your roadmap for this service the better! Many kind thanks,

Kas Stohr

[Eric Rosenfeld]

Hey Frank,

I am the CEO of ChangeUs. I sent you a message on linkedin. I'd love to discuss your requirements in detail and explore how we can support your work. We developed an Agentic AI system to scrape real time data including elected officials and I hope it can be of assistance to you.

Please feel free to email me directly at er...@changeus.org. You may also contact us at (415)-545-8866

Regards,

Eric Rosenfeld

On Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 8:39 AM Frank Gould <fgoul...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello everyone,

I am looking for a source of US elected officials records to display to local activists. I tried Ballotready, Stump, and Changeus but haven't received any responses. Are there any recommendations for contacting these organizations or others?

Regards,
Frank Gould

On Sunday, February 9, 2025 at 10:31:24 PM UTC-8 bob woodward wrote:

hi Kas!

I've not found a free or low cost api for civic data. I'm using the address lookup from the us census bureau and civic data from open states. see my previous post(s) for details. my application is in prod and I'm satisfied with the results. I just wish there were more local data.

On Wednesday, February 5, 2025 at 1:42:02 PM UTC-6 Kas Stohr wrote:

Very excited by all the new civic apps coming to market. There are a number of existing apps as well. I work for one joinunified.us that has thousands of users and supports activists and organizers. joinunified.us. (Check it out. https://www.joinunified.us/)

However.... 

It would be great if folks could share info on replacing GoogleCivic API rather than apps that use such data. Many of us are users of the api... and need to migrate to a new data source.  Ballotpedia, BallotReady are great, but they come at a cost and the structure of the data (last I evaluated both platforms) is different. So, the change comes with additional development overhead.

Wondering if there are free civic data API alternatives that are 1) Free or very low cost. 2) make use of OCDids and 3) and are similar in structure to GoogleCivic API? (i.e. address lookup returns a list of nested OCDids, and elections, public offices, public officials are linked by OCDid.) 

On Friday, April 19, 2024 at 8:35:04 AM UTC-5 Google Civic Information API wrote:

We will be turning down the Representatives API next year in April 2025. This API gives developers the ability to identify the elected representatives for a residential address or division. When we first launched the API 10 years ago, there was limited offering of political representation data in the civic information ecosystem. Today, there are alternate providers who are able to serve authoritative representation data directly to developers. 

Some key points:

• Both representativeInfoByAddress and representativeInfoByDivision methods will be turned down next year in April 2025. 

• Until the turndown date, the Representatives API will be functional and supported as usual.

• After the turndown date, the Representatives API will not be available.

• There is no impact on Elections or Divisions APIs, and they will continue to be supported. 

• There are other providers who offer political representation data. The current Representatives API data comes from the Governance Project. 

• To ease the transition to other providers of representation data, Google will launch a new method under the Divisions API which can be used to look up Open Civic Data Identifiers (OCD-IDs) for a given residential address. The OCD-ID can then be used to lookup representatives in other providers’ datasets. This launch is planned by Sep 2024 to give time for integration in your applications by the April 2025 turndown date. 

Please reach out to us if you have questions regarding this notice.

- Civic Information API team

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-civicinfo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/7aab3f8e-ab03-4642-ad43-659f2570b774n%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-civicinfo...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/8f64dbea-e428-430b-af63-4c762913bb3dn%40googlegroups.com.

[Aviva Rosman]

Hi everyone, 

I wanted to quickly follow up to let the group know that we've added exposing OCD IDs in the API to our roadmap for this next cycle of development work. I appreciate the feedback on how this would be useful and I'm glad that we are making this change. 

Thank you, 

Aviva

Aviva Rosman ● COO

BallotReady

m. 617.721.2455 | e. av...@ballotready.org

w. ballotready.org

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-civicinfo-api+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/9c62cac3-2284-498b-90a4-0652ddbea354n%40googlegroups.com.

[Kas Stohr]

Aviva, 

Great!  Thank you for letting us know. What is your timeline approximately? Appreciate the responsiveness to the community's needs. 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/9c62cac3-2284-498b-90a4-0652ddbea354n%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/google-civicinfo-api/9fwFn-dhktA/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to google-civicinfo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/m84qnjfn.f28bd81a-8528-40dd-b6f6-7748d39d7bba%40we.are.superhuman.com.

[Aviva Rosman]

Hi! Goal is to have this live by the end of April, but we can keep the group updated. 

Aviva Rosman ● COO

BallotReady

m. 617.721.2455 | e. av...@ballotready.org

w. ballotready.org

On Wed, Mar 12, 2025 at 2:21 PM, Kas Stohr <k...@joinunified.us> wrote:

Aviva, 

Great!  Thank you for letting us know. What is your timeline approximately? Appreciate the responsiveness to the community's needs. 

On Wed, Mar 12, 2025 at 2:30 AM Aviva Rosman <aviva@ballotready.org> wrote:

Hi everyone, 

I wanted to quickly follow up to let the group know that we've added exposing OCD IDs in the API to our roadmap for this next cycle of development work. I appreciate the feedback on how this would be useful and I'm glad that we are making this change. 

Thank you, 

Aviva

Aviva Rosman ● COO

BallotReady

m. 617.721.2455 | e. aviva@ballotready.org

w. ballotready.org

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-civicinfo-api+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/9c62cac3-2284-498b-90a4-0652ddbea354n%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/google-civicinfo-api/9fwFn-dhktA/unsubscribe.

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to google-civicinfo-api+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/m84qnjfn.f28bd81a-8528-40dd-b6f6-7748d39d7bba%40we.are.superhuman.com.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-civicinfo-api+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/CAHfw2M4UkNTE_YRS5Tvn5eBhsyaqD1NdXZEN1uA1JyD7-QK_Aw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Kas Stohr]

Aviva... that would be awesome! Thank you again for keeping the group informed.

On Thu, Mar 13, 2025 at 11:45 AM Aviva Rosman <av...@ballotready.org> wrote:

Hi! Goal is to have this live by the end of April, but we can keep the group updated. 

Aviva Rosman ● COO

BallotReady

m. 617.721.2455 | e. av...@ballotready.org

w. ballotready.org

On Wed, Mar 12, 2025 at 2:21 PM, Kas Stohr <k...@joinunified.us> wrote:

Aviva, 

Great!  Thank you for letting us know. What is your timeline approximately? Appreciate the responsiveness to the community's needs. 

On Wed, Mar 12, 2025 at 2:30 AM Aviva Rosman <av...@ballotready.org> wrote:

Hi everyone, 

I wanted to quickly follow up to let the group know that we've added exposing OCD IDs in the API to our roadmap for this next cycle of development work. I appreciate the feedback on how this would be useful and I'm glad that we are making this change. 

Thank you, 

Aviva

Aviva Rosman ● COO

BallotReady

m. 617.721.2455 | e. av...@ballotready.org

w. ballotready.org

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/9c62cac3-2284-498b-90a4-0652ddbea354n%40googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/google-civicinfo-api/9fwFn-dhktA/unsubscribe.

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to google-civicinfo...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/m84qnjfn.f28bd81a-8528-40dd-b6f6-7748d39d7bba%40we.are.superhuman.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-civicinfo...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/CAHfw2M4UkNTE_YRS5Tvn5eBhsyaqD1NdXZEN1uA1JyD7-QK_Aw%40mail.gmail.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Google Civic Information API" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/google-civicinfo-api/9fwFn-dhktA/unsubscribe.

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to google-civicinfo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-civicinfo-api/m87gukbg.4d33c942-b51f-4443-bd5b-29fd39182c66%40we.are.superhuman.com.