BallotAPI - Ballots for developers

[diafygi]

What problem are you trying to solve?

It is extremely difficult to lookup election ballot information via API in the United States. "What will be on my ballot?" is incredibly hard to answer programmatically because there is no single source of all ballot data and geodata in the United States. Each county has their own system for providing information about what contests will be on ballots, especially at the local level (city councils, school boards, etc.). So, as a result, very few apps and advocacy organizations can use ballot information at scale as part of their voter drives or education initiatives, and when they do, it's extremely expensive and only lasts one election cycle. Also, since local election information is not easily accessible in a structured way, they usually get lost in the shuffle of an election, even when those are the races where the margin of victory is the smallest and voter turnout and participation is the most effective.

BallotAPI is a project to create a centralized, public-domain repository for all election ballots and district maps in the United States. It has two parts: a ballot database and a REST API to query the database. The mission of BallotAPI is to open up ballot information for organizations so they can easily integrate election ballots into their apps and websites. Also, a side benefit of this project will be that it creates a free database of every single district map in the United States.

See https://ballotapi.org/docs/quickstart for some example usages (Get your ballot for an upcoming election, get a district map, search for a candidate, etc.)

Background

I am a volunteer for the League of Women Voters helping maintain it's Voter Guide, Vote411.org, and VotersEdge.org. We have to manually enter the races, ballot initiatives, and candidates in every election. This is incredibly time consuming and takes an army of volunteers across the country to maintain. While this may be possible for an organization as big as the LWV, maintaining a full ballot database for every contest for every election is not possible for the vast majority of organizations across the country. Additionally, I also started a company that does this for the utility sector (UtilityAPI), so I understand how hard and long term the maintenance of this kind of API is.

Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from your project?

This project is specifically focused on providing free, accessible, comprehensive ballot access for app and website developers. The goal is shift the burden of maintaining a ballot database off of the developer's organization and onto this project. That way, they can focus on building their apps and projects, and not on cleaning or maintaining election data.

What other resources/tools are currently serving the same need? How does your project set itself apart?

• BallotPedia.org - API costs money, sometimes incomplete/inaccurate
• Vote411 - LWV run, no API
• Voter's Edge - LWV run, CA only, no API
• Vote USA - No API
• BallotReady - No API, limited coverage
• Google Civic - Limited coverage
• Rock the Vote - No API, Federal/State only

In general, most ballot lookup tools either don't have an API, are not free, or are incomplete in coverage down to the local level. The LWV and BallotPedia tools are generally the best, because they have armies of volunteers maintaining the tools and constantly fixing things.

Where can we find any research/data available/articles?

BallotPedia has a good wiki page on the state of various ballot lookup tools: https://ballotpedia.org/Sample_ballot_lookup_tools

"HIGHLIGHTS - As of October 2018, at least 31 states sponsored sample ballot lookup tools; many of these were incorporated as elements of online voter registration systems. Of the nine major privately run sample ballot lookup tools discussed below, all provide details about federal and state elections. Six provide details about select local elections; none provide comprehensive details about all local elections."

What help do you need now?

See https://github.com/open-austin/ballotapi#current-status

What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?

See https://github.com/open-austin/ballotapi#current-status

How can we contact you outside of Github(list social media or places you're present)?

• Email: [email protected]
• Slack: https://open-austin.slack.com (user: Daniel Roesler)

[diafygi]

Updated the status with two projects (Prototype and Website) with detailed issues

[diafygi]

The website project is now done since we have a new pretty website and logo! https://ballotapi.org