Election Data Feed Usage

Election results data feed

The City of Chilliwack publishes its election results as a machine-readable feed in JSON and XML. It is anonymous: no API key, no registration and no quota, within a published rate limit.

The feed carries the same figures as the City's published results statement and nothing more. It changes only when the City publishes or republishes results, and never exposes figures that have not been published.

Endpoints

All four are GET, anonymous, and return HTTP 200. The two without an id serve whichever election is currently published.

Replace {electionId} with an id from the table below — keep the braces out.

Finding an election id

Use an election id only for an older election. The endpoints without an id follow whichever election the City has published.

These elections have published results right now:

Read from the API as this page loads; published elections only. An election set up but not yet published does not appear here.

Fields

JSON and XML render the same document. Field names, nesting and ordering are identical. Three things differ:

• Types. Every XML value is element text — a number as 9711, a boolean as true or false — so cast them yourself.
• Ids are attributes. electionId, raceId, candidateId and locationId become an id attribute on the corresponding element. format and version are attributes on the <electionResults> root.
• Null. A JSON null is an empty element, not a missing one. Test for empty content, not absence.

generatedAt and publishedAt are ISO-8601 UTC with the Z suffix, e.g. 2026-10-18T03:42:00Z; parse them as an instant. The City's own results page and printed statement show the same instant in Chilliwack local time (Pacific), so 03:42Z appears there as 8:42 PM the previous evening.

Fields are always present unless a row says otherwise. These tables are authoritative, more so than the samples further down.

Top level

The document root. In XML these are children of <electionResults>, except format and version, which are attributes ON that element.

election

Identifies the election the figures belong to.

totals

Election-wide figures, read from the published snapshot -- not summed from locations[].

races[]

One race. The four reporting figures repeat at race level and legitimately differ from totals.

races[].candidates[]

One candidate's election-wide result in one race.

locations[]

One voting location's breakdown.

locations[].races[]

One race as counted at one location.

locations[].races[].candidates[]

One candidate at one location. No rank or elected flag: those are election-wide only.

Behaviour you must handle

“Not published” is a successful response

When there are no published results to serve, the feed returns HTTP 200 with a body containing exactly one field:

{"published": false}

and in XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<electionResults>
  <published>false</published>
</electionResults>

Nothing else — no election name, no date, no counts, no timestamps. This is the normal response before results are released on election night, and a client must not treat it as an error.

An unknown id, an inactive election, and results withdrawn to correct a figure all return the same response; the cases are not distinguished.

Candidate order

races[].candidates[] is in vote order, highest first, ties broken by ballot position. locations[].races[].candidates[] is in ballot order, so the same list of names reads down every location in the same sequence.

Every candidate carries ballotOrder, its position on the printed ballot. Sort by it for the order used in the City's published statement.

Elected and tie flags

isElected is true when the City has determined the candidate holds a seat. Render the flag; do not derive winners from the vote column.

isTiedAtBoundary is true when a candidate is in an unresolved tie across the last available seat. Under the Local Government Act that seat is decided by lot, so a tied candidate has not won it however the votes read. A tie flag means the seat is not final. Report the seat as undecided, declare neither candidate, and do not resolve the tie yourself.

Reporting fractions are per race

The four reporting figures — stationsReporting, stationCount, machinesReporting and machineCount — appear in totals, election-wide, and again on each race. They legitimately differ, because some locations vote in only some races. Show each race's own fraction beside that race rather than one election-wide fraction over a screen of races.

Versioning

Every published response carries format, always chilliwack-election-results, and version, currently 1.0.

A new field is not a breaking change and will not bump the version, so parse tolerantly and ignore fields you do not recognise. A rename, removal or change of meaning bumps the version, and the City will tell consumers beforehand.

Polling

The feed changes only when the City publishes or republishes results. Between publishes, every request returns the same document.

Conditional requests

A published response carries an ETag. Send it back in an If-None-Match header on the next request; if nothing has been republished you get HTTP 304 Not Modified with an empty body. Between publishes, 304 is the expected outcome.

A published response also carries Last-Modified, set to the publish time, for If-Modified-Since. The ETag is the more precise of the two: it moves on every republish, including two within the same second.

How often to poll

Published responses are sent with Cache-Control: public, max-age=30. Poll every 30 to 60 seconds.

The rate limit

The export endpoints accept 30 requests per minute. There is no key and no registration; the limit applies to everyone. A 30-second poll is 2 requests a minute.

The limit is counted per IP address, not per organisation and not per script — several systems behind one office connection share a single allowance of 30 between them. Where there are many consumers, have one of them poll the feed and hand the document to the others internally.

Requests over the limit are answered with HTTP 429 Too Many Requests, with the error body in the format requested: JSON on a /json URL, XML on an /xml URL. Headers on a 429:

A 429 is about request volume only. It does not mean the results changed or were withdrawn; do not clear your display on one.

Do not cache a “not published” response

The not-published response is sent with Cache-Control: no-store and carries no ETag and no Last-Modified. Respect that in your own code and in any proxy or CDN in front of the feed: a shared cache holding it would go on serving “not published” after the results went live.

Do not carry an ETag from one election's response into another. Send If-None-Match only with a tag received from the same URL.

Sample responses

Illustrative only. Invented figures, shortened to one race, one candidate and one location. Where a sample and the field tables disagree, the field tables are correct.

JSON

{
  "format": "chilliwack-election-results",
  "version": "1.0",
  "generatedAt": "2026-10-18T03:15:03Z",
  "publishedAt": "2026-10-18T03:14:41Z",
  "election": {
    "electionId": "3f9a2c1e-...",
    "name": "2026 General Local Election",
    "date": "2026-10-17",
    "statusName": "Preliminary Results"
  },
  "totals": {
    "ballotsCastTotal": 18422,
    "stationsReporting": 25,
    "stationCount": 25,
    "machinesReporting": 31,
    "machineCount": 31
  },
  "races": [{
    "raceId": "b71d5e04-...",
    "name": "Mayor",
    "seatsToElect": 1,
    "totalVotes": 17980,
    "stationsReporting": 25,
    "stationCount": 25,
    "machinesReporting": 25,
    "machineCount": 25,
    "candidates": [{
      "candidateId": "c4e8a190-...",
      "name": "Example, Alex",
      "votes": 9711,
      "ballotOrder": 2,
      "rank": 1,
      "isElected": true,
      "isTiedAtBoundary": false
    }]
  }],
  "locations": [{
    "locationId": "9a02f7bb-...",
    "name": "Example Community Centre",
    "shortName": "Example CC",
    "isAdvanceVoting": false,
    "ballotsCast": 1204,
    "races": [{
      "raceId": "b71d5e04-...",
      "name": "Mayor",
      "candidates": [{
        "candidateId": "c4e8a190-...",
        "name": "Example, Alex",
        "votes": 612
      }]
    }]
  }]
}

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<electionResults format="chilliwack-election-results" version="1.0">
  <generatedAt>2026-10-18T03:15:03Z</generatedAt>
  <publishedAt>2026-10-18T03:14:41Z</publishedAt>
  <election id="3f9a2c1e-...">
    <name>2026 General Local Election</name>
    <date>2026-10-17</date>
    <statusName>Preliminary Results</statusName>
  </election>
  <totals>
    <ballotsCastTotal>18422</ballotsCastTotal>
    <stationsReporting>25</stationsReporting>
    <stationCount>25</stationCount>
    <machinesReporting>31</machinesReporting>
    <machineCount>31</machineCount>
  </totals>
  <races>
    <race id="b71d5e04-...">
      <name>Mayor</name>
      <seatsToElect>1</seatsToElect>
      <totalVotes>17980</totalVotes>
      <stationsReporting>25</stationsReporting>
      <stationCount>25</stationCount>
      <machinesReporting>25</machinesReporting>
      <machineCount>25</machineCount>
      <candidates>
        <candidate id="c4e8a190-...">
          <name>Example, Alex</name>
          <votes>9711</votes>
          <ballotOrder>2</ballotOrder>
          <rank>1</rank>
          <isElected>true</isElected>
          <isTiedAtBoundary>false</isTiedAtBoundary>
        </candidate>
      </candidates>
    </race>
  </races>
  <locations>
    <location id="9a02f7bb-...">
      <name>Example Community Centre</name>
      <shortName>Example CC</shortName>
      <isAdvanceVoting>false</isAdvanceVoting>
      <ballotsCast>1204</ballotsCast>
      <races>
        <race id="b71d5e04-...">
          <name>Mayor</name>
          <candidates>
            <candidate id="c4e8a190-...">
              <name>Example, Alex</name>
              <votes>612</votes>
            </candidate>
          </candidates>
        </race>
      </races>
    </location>
  </locations>
</electionResults>

Questions

For questions about this feed, an election id you cannot find, or advance notice of a version change, email [email protected].