General Information

Updated 2/01/2021

NEW - Expanded candidate bio elements (education, profession, political, congMembership and orgMembership) via CandidateBio.getDetailedBio().
NEW - Zip code lookup is now available via Candidates, Officials, Election, and District.
NOTICE - Report any bugs or feature requests to webmaster [a t] votesmart.org.

The Project Vote Smart API allows people outside our organization to integrate our data into their applications. An application could be a website, standalone program, or pretty much anything in the computer world. The API will respond to simple requests for data, such as 'get bio information for candidate Y' and 'get Votes for candidate X.'

The API backend currently responds in either XML or JSON with the requested data in a somewhat rigid format. This documentation will attempt to show you how the data is returned and how to interact with our backend directly or through our provided libraries.

Many more objects are planned and will be released in stages.

Questions or comments, please e-mail webmaster@votesmart.org.