swiss-democracy-mcp

Part of the Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio — connecting AI models to Swiss institutional data sources.

An MCP server providing access to Swiss direct democracy data, covering all federal popular votes since 1848 and elections since 1900.

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Demo Query

«Wie hat der Kanton Zürich bei der AHV 21 Initiative 2022 abgestimmt,
 und welche Parteien unterstützten die Vorlage?»

→ democracy_search_votes(keyword="AHV 21", year_from=2022)
→ democracy_get_cantonal_results(vote_number="551")
→ democracy_get_party_positions(vote_number="551") → More use cases by audience →

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Data Sources

Source	Coverage	Auth
Swissvotes (Uni Bern)	All federal votes since 1848 · 874 columns · party positions · cantonal results	None ✓
BFS / opendata.swiss	Real-time & archive (since 1981) · municipality level	None ✓
SRGSSR Polis	Votes & elections since 1900 · municipality detail	OAuth2 key

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Tools

Phase 1 — Swissvotes (No Auth Required)

Tool	Description
democracy_search_votes	Search all federal popular votes since 1848 by keyword, date range, legal form, outcome, policy domain
democracy_get_vote_detail	Full details for a specific vote: official title, parliamentary positions, national result, signatures
democracy_get_party_positions	Party recommendations (FDP, SP, SVP, Die Mitte, GPS, GLP, …) with campaign finance data
democracy_get_cantonal_results	Results for all 26 cantons: yes%, turnout, accepted flag
democracy_list_vote_dates	List all voting dates with number of proposals per date

Phase 2 — BFS Real-Time (No Auth Required)

Tool	Description
democracy_bfs_list_vote_dates	List all BFS voting dates (archive + current)
democracy_bfs_get_vote_results	Real-time or archived results at national, cantonal, or municipality level

Phase 3 — SRGSSR Polis (API Key Required)

Tool	Description
democracy_polis_list_votations	Historical votations since 1900 with municipality-level data
democracy_polis_get_votation_detail	Full Polis detail, optionally with all municipality results
democracy_polis_list_elections	National Council, Council of States, and cantonal elections since 1900

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Installation

Claude Desktop (stdio)

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "swiss-democracy": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["swiss-democracy-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "SRGSSR_CONSUMER_KEY": "your_key_here",
        "SRGSSR_CONSUMER_SECRET": "your_secret_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

The SRGSSR_* variables are optional. Without them, all Swissvotes and BFS tools remain fully functional. Only the Polis tools require credentials.

Cloud / Render.com (Streamable HTTP)

pip install swiss-democracy-mcp
MCP_TRANSPORT=streamable_http MCP_PORT=8000 python -m swiss_democracy_mcp.server

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Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              Claude / LLM Host              │
└──────────────┬──────────────────────────────┘
               │ MCP (stdio / Streamable HTTP)
┌──────────────▼──────────────────────────────┐
│         swiss-democracy-mcp                 │
│                                             │
│  ┌─────────────────────────────────────┐   │
│  │  Swissvotes CSV Cache (24h TTL)     │   │
│  │  All 874 columns, since 1848        │   │
│  └──────────────┬──────────────────────┘   │
│                 │                           │
│  ┌──────────────▼──────────────────────┐   │
│  │  BFS / opendata.swiss (no auth)     │   │
│  │  Real-time & archive since 1981     │   │
│  └──────────────┬──────────────────────┘   │
│                 │                           │
│  ┌──────────────▼──────────────────────┐   │
│  │  SRGSSR Polis (OAuth2, optional)    │   │
│  │  Votes & elections since 1900       │   │
│  └─────────────────────────────────────┘   │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Transport: stdio for Claude Desktop · Streamable HTTP for cloud/Render.com
Auth pattern: No-Auth-First — Swissvotes & BFS work without any credentials
Cache: Swissvotes CSV is loaded once at startup and cached for 24 hours

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Portfolio Synergy

Combine with other servers in the Swiss Public Data MCP portfolio:

• zurich-opendata-mcp — add Zurich city-level statistics to vote analysis
• swiss-statistics-mcp — enrich with BFS demographic data by canton
• srgssr-mcp — link SRF news archive content to specific vote dates

Example multi-server query:
«Vergleiche die Abstimmungsresultate zur AHV-Reform mit der Altersstruktur der Kantone»
→ swiss-democracy-mcp + swiss-statistics-mcp

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Safety & Limits

• Read-only: All tools perform HTTP GET requests only — no data is written, modified, or deleted upstream.
• No personal data: Swissvotes, BFS and SRGSSR Polis expose aggregate democratic data (vote results, party positions, cantonal/municipality tallies). No personally identifiable information (PII) is processed or stored by this server.
• Rate limits: Swissvotes is a single CSV downloaded once per 24h and cached in memory. BFS / opendata.swiss and SRGSSR Polis are public APIs without documented rate limits — keep limit and date ranges conservative. The server enforces a 30s timeout per request.
• Data freshness: Real-time BFS results reflect the upstream feed at query time (no local caching). Swissvotes is refreshed every 24h from the Uni Bern mirror.
• Terms of service: Data is subject to the ToS of each source — swissvotes.ch (CC BY 4.0, Uni Bern), opendata.swiss (mostly CC-BY / Open by Default), SRGSSR Polis (free tier, non-commercial use only). Always cite the upstream source in downstream products.
• No guarantees: This server is a community project, not affiliated with the University of Bern, the Federal Statistical Office, or SRG SSR. Availability depends on upstream APIs.

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Known Limitations

• Swissvotes coverage: Cantonal-level results are available since 1848; municipality-level results only via SRGSSR Polis (since ~1990s depending on the vote).
• BFS archive: Real-time service covers federal votes since 1981 only.
• Polis tools: Require free registration at developer.srgssr.ch. Non-commercial use only.
• CSV cache: The Swissvotes dataset is ~several MB and is cached in memory for 24 hours. Memory footprint is accordingly higher than API-only servers.

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Testing

# Unit tests (no network required)
PYTHONPATH=src pytest tests/ -m "not live" -v

# Live tests (require network access)
PYTHONPATH=src pytest tests/ -m "live" -v

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Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Data licenses:

• Swissvotes: Creative Commons BY 4.0
• BFS / opendata.swiss: Open use
• SRGSSR Polis: Non-commercial use only — see developer.srgssr.ch