Swiss Democracy MCP Server

🗳️ swiss-democracy-mcp

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

🌐 English | 🇩🇪 Deutsche Version

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

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Tools

Phase 1 — Swissvotes (No Auth Required)

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

Phase 3 — SRGSSR Polis (API Key Required)

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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
# Bind to all interfaces ONLY inside a container/cloud environment:
MCP_TRANSPORT=streamable_http MCP_HOST=0.0.0.0 MCP_PORT=8000 python -m swiss_democracy_mcp.server

MCP_HOST defaults to 127.0.0.1 (loopback). Set MCP_HOST=0.0.0.0 only inside a sandboxed container/cloud deployment — never on a local machine, where it would expose the server to your whole network.

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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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Configuration

All configuration is via environment variables (see .env.example):

Secrets are held as SecretStr and never logged. See docs/secret-management.md and docs/security.md.

MCP Primitives

This server intentionally exposes Tools only (no Resources or Prompts). It is a Phase-1 read-only data wrapper (see docs/roadmap.md); the tool surface is small (10 use-case-oriented tools) and every response is self-contained with source provenance. Resources (e.g. vote://{anr}) are a candidate for a later phase once the URI scheme stabilises.

MCP Protocol Version

This server speaks two protocol eras over the same endpoint. The client's first request on a connection decides which one applies; a later claim from the other era is refused.

Both revisions are pinned in tests/test_protocol_version.py and asserted against the installed SDK, so a Dependabot bump of mcp cannot move either one silently. This server builds no ASGI app to send an initialize through, so the gate asserts the SDK constants rather than a measured response — the weaker form, named rather than left unsaid.

Note that the SDK's LATEST_PROTOCOL_VERSION is an alias for the modern era, not for the handshake era — pinning against it alone would leave the era that current clients actually negotiate free to drift.

Update policy. When the gate fails, do not edit the constant blindly: read the spec changelog between the two revisions, verify the server still behaves, then move the constant, this section, README.de.md and CHANGELOG.md together.

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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.
• Egress allow-list (SSRF protection): Outbound requests are restricted to a fixed allow-list of trusted hosts (swissvotes.ch, opendata.swiss, *.bfs.admin.ch, api.srgssr.ch), HTTPS only. Caller-supplied URLs (the BFS result_url) are additionally resolved and rejected if they point at private, loopback or cloud-metadata IP ranges.
• 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

Where the test data comes from

The fixtures under tests/fixtures/ are recorded from the live sources and dated. Source, retrieval date, selection rule and SHA-256 for every file: tests/fixtures/PROVENANCE.md.

python scripts/record_fixtures.py   # re-record

The selection rule is the point here. The Swissvotes dataset has 714 rows and 874 columns, and the recorded rows are chosen by property, not by position. "The first N rows" would cut away exactly the cells the fixture exists for: the placeholders 9999 ("no information") and . ("not applicable"), which appear in 667 of the 714 votes. A fixture without them would look clean and prove nothing — which is precisely why nobody noticed the tools were passing them through as if they were values.

The byte-order mark stays in the file too, because the source sets one and the server strips it explicitly. Without it the fixture could not show that it has to.

SRGSSR Polis needs OAuth credentials and is listed under NOT RECORDED in PROVENANCE.md rather than given a date it never had.

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Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md (🇩🇪 Deutsch).

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Security

See SECURITY.md (🇩🇪 Deutsch) for the security posture and vulnerability reporting.

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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

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Author

Hayal Oezkan · github.com/malkreide

Installation

Run via uv's uvx — no clone or manual install needed. Add to your MCP client config (mcpServers for Claude Desktop, Cursor and Windsurf; use a top-level servers key for VS Code in .vscode/mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "swiss-democracy-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "swiss-democracy-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}