Privacy Policy

Information you give us.

• Account: legal first and last name, alias (display name), email, phone number, home address, date of birth and password (stored only as a one-way hash).
• Identity verification: a photo of your government-issued ID and a selfie, and for runners and politicians, proof of candidacy or office. People on our team review these by hand; we don’t use facial recognition.
• Eligibility: your confirmation that you are 18 or older, a U.S. citizen and eligible to vote.
• Profile: photo, cover image, bio, location, website, interests, political views and other details you choose to add.
• Activity: posts, comments, reactions, video answers, questions, endorsements, backs, opposes and tracks, petitions you start or sign, poll votes, issues-quiz answers and messages.
• Optional demographic answers used for poll research (see section 4).
• Payments: runner and politician memberships are paid through Stripe. We receive the payment status and Stripe customer reference, not your card number.
• Support: what you send us through the contact form or email.

Information collected automatically.

• Log data: IP address, browser and device type, pages and features used, timestamps and error reports.
• Approximate location (country and state) worked out from your IP address, to keep the service available only in the United States and to protect accounts.
• Cookies that keep you signed in and protect forms from forgery. We don’t use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.
• Aggregate page-view and performance statistics from Vercel Web Analytics and Speed Insights, which don’t use cookies.
• If you turn on push notifications, the delivery address your browser gives us for them.

Information from other sources. We look up your voting districts from your address using the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder and Google’s Civic Information service. Information about elected officials’ stock trades comes from official public filings (House Clerk and Senate disclosure systems).

• Create and run your account, and verify that you are an adult U.S. voter.
• Match you to your voting districts, which decides whose posts you see first and which candidates you can endorse or oppose.
• Show and deliver your posts, questions, answers, messages and notifications.
• Run polls and petitions, and produce poll research (section 4).
• Keep the platform safe: prevent fraud, fake and foreign accounts, spam and abuse; moderate content; secure accounts.
• Process memberships and payments.
• Respond to you, fix problems and improve the service.
• Meet legal obligations and enforce our Terms.

We don’t show ads and don’t use your information for targeted advertising.

• Visible to signed-in members: your alias, profile photo, role, state badge, the profile details you choose to show, your posts, comments and reactions, endorsements and backs you give, petitions you start, questions you ask, badges, and your overall issues-quiz result (unless you hide political views).
• Shown only as counts: who opposes or tracks a candidate, who signed a petition, and poll results.
• Private: your legal name, email, phone, street address, date of birth, ID documents, private messages (only the people in the conversation can read them), how you voted in any poll, your individual issues-quiz answers and your demographic answers.
• Our team: verification reviewers see your documents while your application is pending, and admins can see account details when needed for support, safety and moderation.

Profile switches let you hide political views, interests, education and occupation from other members.

We share information only as follows:

• Service providers that run parts of WE-TP for us under contract: Vercel (hosting, file storage, analytics), MongoDB Atlas (database), Google (email delivery and the Civic Information service, which receives the address you look up), the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder (receives your address to find your districts), Stripe (payments), and the push service your browser uses (receives notification text).
• Research buyers: group totals only, as described in section 4.
• Other members: what section 3 describes.
• Legal and safety: when the law requires it (for example a subpoena or court order), or when needed to protect people from harm, prevent fraud or election interference, or defend our rights. Where allowed, we tell you first.
• Business changes: if WE-TP is merged, acquired or sold, your information may transfer to the new owner, who must keep honoring this policy.

We never sell your name, contact details, street address, ID documents, private messages or individual votes, and we don’t share information for targeted advertising.

Some of what we hold is sensitive: ID documents and selfies, your street address, your political opinions and activity, private messages, and (only if you agree) race or ethnicity, religion and disability. We use it only to provide the service, verify eligibility, keep the platform safe, and, for demographic answers you chose to give, for group research results (section 4). We don’t use it to infer things about you or to profile you for advertising.

You can withdraw permission for race or ethnicity, religion and disability at any time in Settings, which deletes those answers.

• You upload a photo of your ID and a selfie when you apply. They are stored securely and only verification reviewers can open them.
• They are deleted as soon as your application is approved or rejected.
• If an application stays pending for 30 days, it is removed automatically, documents included.
• Deleting your account deletes any remaining documents and profile media.
• ID images are never included in data downloads and are never shared outside our review team and storage provider.

Everyone can:

• See and download your information: Settings → Data.
• Correct your profile in Settings. Changes to your email, legal name or address go through our team so a stolen session can’t change them.
• Delete your account: Settings → Privacy & Security. This removes your profile, content and documents, except where we must keep records for legal reasons.
• Opt out of research use and change or delete demographic answers (section 4).
• Choose notifications in Settings → Notifications, and turn off push notifications in your browser.

State privacy rights. Depending on where you live (for example California, Colorado, Connecticut, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and other states with consumer privacy laws), you may have the right to know what personal information we have and how we use it, to get a copy, to correct or delete it, to opt out of its sale or sharing and of targeted advertising, to limit the use of sensitive information, and not to be treated differently for using these rights. Most of these are available directly in Settings.

For anything else, use the contact form. We will confirm the request comes from you (normally by your signed-in account) and answer within 45 days, or tell you if we need more time as the law allows. You can use an authorized agent with your written permission. If we decline your request, you can appeal by replying to our decision; we will answer the appeal within the time your state’s law sets, and if you are still unsatisfied you can contact your state attorney general.

• Account and content: while your account is open. When you delete your account we delete it, except records we must keep for legal, security or fraud-prevention reasons.
• ID documents: deleted when your application is decided, or after 30 days pending (section 7).
• Demographic answers: until you change or delete them, or close your account.
• Logs and security records: kept only as long as needed to run and protect the service.
• Backups kept by our database and hosting providers expire on their regular schedules.

• Encrypted connections (HTTPS) everywhere, and encryption at rest by our database and hosting providers.
• Private messages are additionally encrypted in our database.
• Passwords stored only as salted bcrypt hashes; optional two-factor sign-in.
• Sign-in sessions in secure cookies that page scripts can’t read; signing out ends the session, and changing your password can sign out your other devices.
• Lockouts after repeated failed sign-ins, rate limits, and access controls so only reviewers see ID documents.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

WE-TP is only for people who are 18 or older and eligible to vote in the United States, and it is run from and intended for the United States. We don’t knowingly collect information from anyone under 18; if we learn we have, we delete it.

We send account, verification and security emails, which you can’t turn off while your account is open. To stop other emails, change your notification settings or use the contact form; we honor requests within 10 business days.

We will post any change here and update the date at the top. If a change materially affects how we use your information, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.

Questions or requests about privacy: use the contact form or the email address on our Help page.