Google Civic Information API
What is the Civic Information API?
The Google Civic Information API allows developers to build applications that display civic information to their users. For any U.S. residential address, you can look up who represents that address at each elected level of government. During supported elections, you can also look up polling places, early vote location, candidate data, and other election official information.
Get to know your representatives
The newest feature of the Civic Information API allows you to enter an address to look up the corresponding district at each level of government and the names and social media properties for the elected officials in those districts.
How it works
Our data is based on the political geography of a citizen’s address. This address indicates where a citizen is eligible to vote and who represents them. There are many U.S. elections throughout the year, and both election information and political geography can shift with time. Google assigns every election available in the API an election ID, and the information associated with that ID is intended to be accurate for that election only.
The service is free for data providers, users who access this information, and third parties who use our apps to display civic information on their site. Once you register your project in the Cloud Console, you may make up to 25,000 queries per day. If you need additional quota, use the Quotas page in the Cloud Console for your project to make a request.
Try it out
To start developing with the Civic Information API, take a look at our reference documentation, and our ‘Map Your Representatives’ application and Voter Information tool, both built using the API.
Change.org has also used the API to allow users to post a petition to an elected representative's page. The representative can see how many of their constituents have signed a petition addressed to them, giving them insight into what issues are being discussed in her district and the ability to respond directly.
The Google Civic Information API allows civic information to be retrieved by any organization or individual, provided they accept our API Terms of Service.
How does Google work with the Voting Information Project?
The Voting Information Project is a partnership of state election officials, foundations, and leading technology companies in the U.S. working together to connect voters with the election information they need to be more engaged citizens. Google is one the founders and participants in the initiative.
voterInfoQuery returns data for elections supported by the Voting Information Project. This data may include both official data published and verified directly by a state or local election official along with data collected from official sources by trusted third party partners.
For more information about Google's elections initiatives, see Google Politics & Elections.