{googlecivic}

{googlecivic} is an R package designed to interface with the Google Civic Information API. In order to use this R package you will need to have a project under a Google Cloud Platform account and will need to create an API key for that project. Log in or create an account for Google Cloud Platform. Click on the dropdown in the console in the top left, then create a new project:

Next, enable APIs and services on the project:

Then, search for the google civic API and enable it:

Create a key for the Google Civic API:

Once you have this API key you can save it somewhere safe and supply it to functions in this R package.

The Google Civic Information API offers several APIs to get information on election information, polling places, and political geographies of representatives. This package current just has a function to interface with the voter information endpoint, but functions will be added in the future to use the full API.

Installation

You can install the released version of googlecivic from Github with:

library(remotes)
install_github("willdebras/googlecivic")

API keys

The functions for each of the three APIs have a key argument that defaults to an object called google_civic_api. We can use the function argument to manually include the key, such as:

get_voterinfo(address = "55 e monroe, chicago, il", key = xxxxxxxxxxxxx)

Alternatively, we can assign the key to an object called google_civic_api and leave the key argument blank, such as:

google_civic_api <- xxxxxxxxxxxxx

The best method to store this key though is probably to set it to an environment variable and call it later, such as:

Sys.setenv(google_civic_api="xxxxxxxxxxxxx")

get_voterinfo(address = "55 e monroe, chicago, il", key = Sys.getenv("google_civic_api"))

You can also use a .Renviron file to have R automatically set the environment variable at startup. The package usethis can be handy for this.

usethis::edit_r_environ()

This will open a .Renviron file for you. Add a line like this, but substitute your API key:

google_civic_api="xxxxxxxxxxxxx"

Save the file then restart your R session

get_voterinfo(address = "55 e monroe, chicago, il", key = Sys.getenv("google_civic_api"))

Voter Information API

The voter information API produces a list of voter information related to a single address or election. The function takes a single argument of a string for an address and returns a nested list of information related to elections, polling locations and information, and state information related to elections.

We can get some basic data about voter information with the get_voterinfo() function. Type ?get_voterinfo to see an explanation of each parameter.

library(googlecivic)

get_voterinfo(address = "55 e monroe, chicago, il", key = Sys.getenv("google_civic_api"))
#> $error
#> $error$errors
#>   domain  reason          message
#> 1 global invalid Election unknown
#> 
#> $error$code
#> [1] 400
#> 
#> $error$message
#> [1] "Election unknown"

Election API

The election API returns a list of election informations as id, name, date and Open Civic Data Division Identifier(OCDid). We can get these data with the get_electionid() function that receives the API key as the only argument.

library(googlecivic)

get_electionid(key = Sys.getenv("google_civic_api"))

Representatives Information by Address API

The representatives by address API retrieves information about divisions, offices and officials’ information related to an address. The get_rep_address() function takes an address, an office level and role as arguments. For detailed explanation of the each parameter type ?get_rep_voter.

get_rep_address(address = "55 e monroe, chicago,il", level="regional", role="schoolBoard", key = Sys.getenv("google_civic_api"))

Representatives Information by Division API

This API returns a list of offices by divisions and respective officials. The get_rep_by_division() function takes an OCD identifier office levels and roles as parameters. The OCDid can be retrieved from the get_electionid() function. For detailed explanation about it type ?get_rep_by_division.

get_rep_by_division(ocdId = "ocd-division/country:us/district:dc",level="locality",recursive = TRUE)

API documentation

While the {googlecivic} package has documentation in the help files, it can be useful to see an explanation of each endpoint and each parameter in the functions. The Google Civic Information API developer page contains reference to all of these endpoints and parameters and additional documentation of running individual queries outside of the context of this package.

Issues

If you have an issue, feature suggestion, or question regarding use, feel free to open an issue here on github or tweet at me @_willdebras.