Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 2026

The Short Version: We collect your survey responses and location data needed to match you with politicians. If you enter a full street address, we use it transiently to determine your congressional district more accurately, then retain only derived location fields such as state, district, and ZIP code. If you use the sample-ballot worksheet, your marks are stored privately for your account only. We only publish aggregated district-level data from account-linked respondents once minimum sample thresholds are met. We do not sell any data today; if we begin selling those aggregates, Section 4 will say so before the first sale. We never sell individual data.

1. Who We Are

PartyLine ("we," "our," or "us") operates the website mypartyline.org and related mobile applications. Our mission is to give voters a clear, accessible view of what their elected officials actually do.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Information You Provide

Data Purpose Required?
Email address Account creation and communication Only for accounts
State and congressional district Show your representatives and candidates Yes
Street address (transient lookup only) Determine your congressional district accurately Yes, during address lookup
ZIP code Retained as part of your derived location record Yes
Survey responses Match you with politicians, generate aggregates Yes
Ballot marks (races you mark on your sample-ballot worksheet, including candidate choices, "undecided," and "skip") Show your own marked worksheet back to you No — only if you use the worksheet, and only after you consent
About ballot marks: your marks are a personal worksheet, not a vote — nothing you mark is cast, transmitted to any election authority, or legally binding. Marks are visible only to your account; that restriction is enforced in the database itself, not just in our application code. We keep no history of changed marks: updating a mark overwrites it, so a record of what you considered before deciding never exists. Every mark records the version of the terms you consented to when you made it, and any future aggregate use is governed by that recorded version. We do not currently publish any ballot-mark aggregates; if we ever do, they will be aggregated at the district level with minimum sample-size thresholds, never individually.

2.2 Information Collected Automatically

Data Purpose Retention
IP address hash Fraud prevention and duplicate-submission detection; we do not store the raw IP address 30 days
Browser information (user agent and referring page URL) Bot detection, abuse investigation, and troubleshooting 90 days
Session-level analytics events (event name, page path, feature usage) Product improvement and understanding how people use PartyLine Event data retained indefinitely; user-identifiable fields (user ID, session ID, ZIP code) automatically removed after 90 days
State, district, and ZIP code associated with survey responses Matching you with local representatives and generating aggregate district statistics Retained with survey response; ZIP code removed from analytics after 90 days
Session ID and response ID for analytics correlation Linking analytics events to survey sessions for product improvement Automatically removed after 90 days

2.3 Information We Do NOT Collect

We do not retain your raw full street address in long-term browser storage or in our survey-response records. We keep only the derived location fields needed to operate the service, such as state, district, ZIP code, and location accuracy metadata.

3. How We Use Your Information

4. Data Aggregation and Sale

Important: PartyLine does not sell any data today. If and when we do, we will sell only aggregated district-level figures with user-identifiable fields removed. We NEVER sell individual responses, and we NEVER share data that could identify you personally.

4.1 What We Intend to Sell

PartyLine does not sell any data today. We intend to offer district-level aggregate statistics to political campaigns, advocacy organizations, researchers, and media outlets. We think a campaign that can see what the voters in a district actually want is a good thing for those voters. Such a figure is published only where a district has at least 100 verified responses, so it is always a count or an average across at least 100 people. For example:

As of the effective date at the bottom of this page, PartyLine has sold no data to anyone, and no payment method can be charged for data through the Service. Before the first sale we will change this section to say that sales have begun, and we will post a notice on the site. Until then, treat every sentence about selling here as a statement of intent, not of practice.

4.2 What We Never Sell

4.3 Your Right to Opt Out

You can opt out of having your survey answers and your ballot marks counted in any aggregate figure we publish or offer for sale. Opting out takes effect immediately, and you keep the full use of PartyLine. There are four ways to do it:

Global Privacy Control. If your browser or a privacy extension sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we read it and opt you out of aggregation automatically, without your having to ask. The account settings screen tells you when we have honored it. If your browser does not send the signal, nothing changes and we do not treat that as permission for anything.

Note: Opting out does not affect your ability to use PartyLine, and we will never ask you to give up a feature for it. A figure that has already been published cannot be un-published, because an aggregate holds no individual information to remove — but nothing of yours enters a new one after you opt out.

What opting out does not cover, said plainly: we still count how many people use PartyLine — how many surveys were completed on a given day, how many accounts exist, how many people came back a second time. Those are headcounts. They hold no answers, no district and nothing that identifies you, and they are not the district figures we publish or would ever offer for sale.

All of these controls, and a plain statement of what PartyLine does and does not sell today, are collected on one page: Do Not Sell or Share My Information.

5. Data Security

We implement industry-standard security measures:

6. Your Rights

6.1 Right to Access

You can delete your account yourself: log in on the dashboard and choose “Delete account”, and your account and the data tied to it are removed from our database right away. A deletion requested by email instead is completed within 45 days (see 6.2). Copies in our database provider’s routine backups are not edited; they expire on the provider’s schedule. You can also request a copy of all data we have about you by emailing privacy@mypartyline.org.

6.2 Right to Delete

You can request deletion of your data at any time:

We will acknowledge your request within 10 business days and complete deletion within 45 days. Note: We cannot delete data that has already been included in aggregate statistics, as it no longer contains any individual information.

6.3 Right to Correction

You can update your survey responses at any time by retaking the survey.

6.4 California Residents (CCPA)

If you are a California resident, you have additional rights:

To exercise these rights, email privacy@mypartyline.org.

How a request is handled: send it to privacy@mypartyline.org from any address, and say what you want done. We aim to acknowledge every request within 10 business days and to complete it within 45 days, and we write to you if we need longer and say why. There is no charge for a request, we do not require you to create an account to make one, and we do not treat you differently for making one.

We honor the Global Privacy Control signal. If your browser or a privacy extension sends it, we treat you as opted out of aggregation automatically — you do not have to write to us, and we tell you in your account settings that we honored it.

Every one of these controls, including the self-serve opt-out switch, is collected on Do Not Sell or Share My Information, which also states plainly what PartyLine does and does not sell today. These commitments are ours voluntarily; we offer them because they are right, not because we have concluded that any particular statute applies to PartyLine today.

7. Data Retention

Data Type Retention Period
Survey responses Until you request deletion
Account information Until you request deletion
IP address hashes 30 days
Browser information 90 days
Browser-local survey state and comparison preferences Until you clear browser data, reset the app, or overwrite the saved state on this device. This local state does not intentionally retain your raw full street address.
Ballot marks Until you change or clear them; deleted automatically and immediately when your account is deleted
Aggregated statistics Indefinitely (contains no personal data)

8. Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services:

9. Children's Privacy

PartyLine's general consumer product is intended for users 18 years and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

Classroom Mode: PartyLine offers a dedicated Classroom Mode for use in educational settings under educator supervision. Student participation does not require names, email addresses, or accounts. Responses are stored with a random identifier and cannot be traced back to individual students by PartyLine or educators. Aggregated classroom results are only displayed when 5 or more students have participated, preventing individual identification. Educators must acknowledge our classroom privacy policy before creating a class.

If you believe a child under 13 has provided personal information outside of Classroom Mode, please contact us at privacy@mypartyline.org and we will promptly delete it.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of significant changes by:

Your continued use of PartyLine after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

11. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, contact us at:

12. Cookie Policy

We use minimal cookies and local storage:

Type Purpose Duration
Authenticated session cookie (HttpOnly) Keep you signed in across page loads Up to 30 days unless you log out sooner
Survey state and match results (localStorage) Save your progress and results on this device between page loads Until you clear browser data, reset the app, or the saved state is overwritten
Dashboard comparison preferences (localStorage) Remember perspectives and comparison UI state on this device Until you clear browser data or overwrite the saved state

We do not use tracking cookies or share cookie data with third parties for advertising.

This Privacy Policy is effective as of September 20, 2026. Previous version: August 2026.

Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Do Not Sell or Share My Info · Methodology