Data we handle
Like any website, our hosting providers (Cloudflare for the site and Google Cloud for our API) receive ordinary technical request data such as your IP address, browser user agent, and the page requested. If you email us, Gmail processes the message and related account information. Please send only what is needed for your inquiry.
We measure traffic with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which does not use cookies or track you across sites. Our API keeps request statistics with IP addresses replaced by a keyed one-way hash; it does not store raw IP addresses for analytics.
The site remembers your light or dark theme choice in your browser's local storage. It sets no advertising or tracking cookies.
Candidate photos and other images
Many candidate photos are loaded directly from the sites that publish them, such as Wikimedia Commons, campaign sites, and government sites. When your browser loads one of those images, that host receives your IP address, browser user agent, and that the request came from smarter.vote, and handles it under its own policies.
Address lookup
If address suggestions are enabled, what you type is sent directly from your browser to Google Places. Selecting a suggestion retrieves its formatted address. The completed address is then sent to Smarter.Vote's API, which forwards it to the U.S. Census Geocoder to identify a state and congressional district and returns only those two values. Our API does not store or log the address, and it is never placed in the page URL, analytics, or browser storage. Google and the Census Bureau handle their parts of the lookup under their own policies.
The derived state, district, and matched race IDs are kept in this tab's session storage so results survive a refresh, and are cleared when you search another address or close the tab. The state and district (not your address) are also added to the My Ballot page URL so the results can be bookmarked or shared; anyone you share that link with can see them.
Support payments
When online support payments are enabled, checkout is handled by Stripe on Stripe's own pages. Stripe collects your card details, email address, and billing information and processes them under its own privacy policy. Smarter.Vote never receives your card number. Payment records, including the amount and the contact details you give Stripe, are kept in Smarter.Vote LLC's Stripe account for receipts, bookkeeping, refunds, and managing monthly support. Our own server logs only the checkout session ID, amount, and payment status.
Administrator sign-in
Visitors do not need to sign in. Auth0 is used only for Smarter.Vote administrators to sign in to the site's admin tools, and processes their account and login data under its own policies. No visitor account data is collected.
Retention and access
The Gmail inbox is initially limited to the Smarter.Vote LLC owner, protected with multi-factor authentication, and organized by inquiry type. Our working target is to delete inactive inquiry correspondence after 12 months unless it is needed for an active matter, legal obligation, security, or bookkeeping.
Your choices
You can browse public research without an account. You may ask about, correct, or request deletion of personal information you sent us, subject to obligations that require retention.
Contact Smarter.Vote LLC at SmarterDotVote@gmail.com.
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