Availability if New York City data/how to test application ahead of time

[Sonia Putzel]

Hello, we're building a tool to match voters' poll sites with language access services that the Civic Engagement Commission renders at NYC poll sites. We have two questions:

1. Does anyone have a sense of whether poll site data has historically been consistently available for both local and national elections in NYC for this API? And if so, is it usually a full data set (complete response to the queries in a way that fully matches the structures shown in the reference) or does the Board of Elections only provide limited information (for example, only the pollingLocations but not the earlyVoteSites)? We're mainly interested in knowing what we'll receive in the voterInfoResponse. 
2. We saw that election information is usually posted a few weeks before each election. How would you recommend testing an app before the relevant data is posted on the API? Is there a test data set that we can query?

[Sonia Putzel]

... thank you!!!

[Mike Pechter]

Hello,

Thanks for your patience on this. Here is my response to your questions:

1. VIP typically publishes local and national elections for all of NY state, including NYC, in the Civic Info API. We publish both election day polling locations (pollingLocations) and early voting sites (earlyVoteSites) as well as drop boxes.

2. There is data always available in the API for developer testing. The data loaded currently onto the EID 2000 is for Los Angeles County, CA. Would this be usable by your app?

Please let me know if I can be more helpful.

Thanks,

Mike Pechter

Senior Data Associate - Voting Information Project

[Sonia Putzel]

Hi Mike,

Thank you so much for your response! 

It's helpful to know about the local and national election data being pushed to the Civic Info API. We're hoping to have users look up their poll sites using their street address - it sounds like the data you receive can provide that information! 

Yes, I believe the LA County data should be usable for developing our app, thank you! 

It sounds as if you connected with my colleague, Devaughn Goodwin, and we might have a meeting in the next couple of weeks! Looking forward to learning more about your projects and APIs! 

Sonia