Google Civic API: 400 Bad Request [duplicate] - vb.net

Question

This question already has answers here:
400 BAD request HTTP error code meaning?
(10 answers)
Closed 3 years ago.
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
I'm using Vb.net and the code i'm using is...
Public Sub New()
Dim webClient As New System.Net.WebClient
Dim iplookup As String = webClient.DownloadString("https://www.googleapis.com/civicinfo/v2/elections?key=<AIzaoKpBLK6uOqCJovCHmbHWYavDxx4cA-3_v8>")
console.WriteLine(iplookup)
End Sub
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.

Answer 1

Accessing the link you used on the code, you get more details about the error, specifically this:
{
"error": {
"errors": [
{
"domain": "usageLimits",
"reason": "keyInvalid",
"message": "Bad Request"
}
],
"code": 400,
"message": "Bad Request"
}
}
Meaning you API Key is invalid. First of all, I surely don't think the "<" and ">" are part of the key, so try removing that first. Then, you should check you account to see if you are using the correct key. If it still doesn't work, check restrictions.
Go to your Google API Console, on the left side click on Credentials, and there should be your Key. If it's not, create one. Check your restrictions to make sure you can access it, then click the little copy button on the right side to make sure your are not copying it wrong. Replace the APIKEYHERE and nothing else on the following link with your key, making sure to not add anything else, and try to access it in your browser. If you have no setting in your API you should get an Error 403, meaning you didn't configure the access: googleapis.com/civicinfo/v2/elections?key=APIKEYHERE