I'm neck deep in government open data again, and as we are gearing up for the presidential election, you really begin to see the potential for accurate, real-time election data via APIs. There are a number of leading election-related APIs at the federal level like we have from the Sunlight Foundation, and you see the emergence of high value APIs out of government like the Federal Election Commision (FEC) API from the 18F, but with the amount of money in politics, and scope of what is at stake, I can't help but feel there is a huge opportunity out there for more election APIs.
Seems to me that there is an opportunity for some API savvy activistpreneur to step up at the city, county, state, and even the federal level. I'm not just talking about election districts, candidate, and other common building blocks of elections we experience, but real-time sentiment, superpac spending, and other influential information that if availablle for distribution via APIs, could shift the balance one way or another. It would take a healthy assessment of the current landscape, but I think you could identify some low hanging fruit to get started with.
One you get going on the API journey around election data, if you do it right, you will learn a lot, and discover other valuable content or data sources, and see patterns that the rest of might not see. The use of social platforms over the last 8+ years of elections was all API driven, and is just the tip of the iceberg--an API dedicated to elections seems like a huge opportunity to me, in coming months and years.
Let's get to work!
