Privacy

Privacy information

Short version: we collect as little as possible, we keep your name apart from what you observed, we never publish individual reports, and we do not track you.

What we collect when you share an observation

• About the visit: election date, polling place name and address, town, approximate time.
• Your observations: the topic and item you chose, your answer (observed, observed otherwise, unable to determine) and your description in your own words.
• Optional contact: your name and email, only if you enter them, and whether you agreed to be contacted.
• Technical: a verification token (Cloudflare Turnstile, when enabled) and a one-way hash of your connection address that changes daily and is used only to limit abuse. We do not store your IP address, precise location, or device identifiers.

We do not ask for, and ask you not to write, political affiliation, candidate preferences, ballot choices, immigration status, or the names of other voters.

How it is stored

Observations are stored in a database hosted on Cloudflare. Your name and email are stored in a separate, restricted table linked only by an internal reference. Reviewers see contact details only when they open a submission that asked for follow-up. Every reviewer action is logged.

What we do with it

• A small volunteer team reads each submission.
• Nothing is published individually. No polling place is rated or ranked.
• If patterns across many reports are ever summarized publicly, that happens through a separate review, without names, contact details, or free-text quotations that could identify anyone.
• We may share a report with election officials if it describes something they should know, with your contact details only if you agreed to follow-up.

How long we keep it

Contact details are deleted after 180 days. Observation records are deleted after two years, unless they are part of an open review. Review logs that contain no personal data may be kept longer.

Your reference number

After you submit, you receive a reference number. It identifies the submission, not you, and it cannot be used to look up the observation online. Keep it if you want to ask us about your submission.

On this device

Your reading and listening settings, and a draft of a submission you have not finished, are saved only in your browser's storage on this device. They are never sent to us. Clearing your browser data removes them.

No tracking

This site uses no advertising, no analytics scripts and no social-media embeds. The optional Turnstile verification is provided by Cloudflare and is used only to tell people from automated programs; its privacy practices are Cloudflare's.

Questions

Write to the address in the site footer or ask the volunteer team through the contact details on the official resources page's companion note. This page describes our practices as built; it is not a legal document and will be updated when practices change.