# Introduction

The quilt of American democracy is highly varied and complex. Ballotpedia strives to create an intuitive data structure to serve the variety of elections across the country, but it still requires some special terminology and a few unique data structures. This site includes information about API syntax, key concepts, data dictionaries, and some details about common edge cases.

*Navigate to either* [*Geographic APIs*](https://developer.ballotpedia.org/geographic-apis) *or* [*Bulk Data*](https://developer.ballotpedia.org/bulk-data) *depending on your use case to learn more.*

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to your Ballotpedia sales contact.


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# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://developer.ballotpedia.org/introduction.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.