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

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[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.

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[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