title: Google Civic API: 400 Bad Request
body: <p>This is my first time using an API, and i'm trying to figure out what exactly i'm doing wrong here. I'm trying to do the simple tutorial as seen here <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/gF6HO.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/gF6HO.jpg" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p>I'm using Vb.net and the code i'm using is...</p>
  
  <pre><code>Public Sub New()
      Dim webClient As New System.Net.WebClient
      Dim iplookup As String = webClient.DownloadString("https://www.googleapis.com/civicinfo/v2/elections?key=&lt;AIzaoKpBLK6uOqCJovCHmbHWYavDxx4cA-3_v8&gt;")
      console.WriteLine(iplookup)
  End Sub
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And I keep getting a 400 bad request error and i'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Any and all help is much appreciated. As I said, this is my first time using an API so please dumb it down if you could. Also, I changed a few characters in my key to post this.</p>