Terms of Service

Effective Date: August 18, 2026 · Previous version: April 5, 2026

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing or using PartyLine ("the Service"), operated by PartyLine ("we," "us," or "our"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Some parts of the Service ask for your agreement again, at the moment they matter — for example before your responses are counted in any aggregate figure. Agreement given here does not replace those specific disclosures, and where a specific disclosure is narrower than this document, the narrower one controls.

2. Eligibility

PartyLine's general consumer product is intended for users aged 18 and older. By using the Service outside of Classroom Mode, you represent that you are at least 18 years old.

Classroom Mode: PartyLine's Classroom Mode is designed for use in educational settings under direct educator supervision. Students participating in Classroom Mode do not create accounts and no personal identifiers are collected.

3. Accounts & Authentication

Some features require a user account via email-based authentication through Supabase. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials. You must provide accurate information and promptly update it if it changes.

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms.

4. Premium Features

Current status: PartyLine is not selling subscriptions. No payment method can be charged through the Service today, and every feature we describe as Premium is currently available to all users at no cost. If paid subscriptions begin, we will say so on the Service before any charge is possible, and the terms below apply from that point forward — not retroactively.

If and when paid subscriptions are available:

Billing: Subscriptions are billed through Stripe on a monthly or yearly basis. By subscribing, you authorize recurring charges at the selected interval.
Cancellation: You may cancel your subscription at any time through the Manage Subscription option in your dashboard or by contacting us. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.
Refunds: We do not offer prorated refunds for partial billing periods. If you believe you were charged in error, contact us at support@mypartyline.org.
Price Changes: We may change subscription prices with 30 days' advance notice. Continued use after a price change constitutes acceptance.
App store purchases: If you subscribe through the Apple App Store or Google Play, that store's billing, cancellation, and refund policies govern the transaction, and you manage or cancel the subscription through your store account rather than through us.

Premium governs access to features. It does not buy a different version of the record: paying does not make the underlying data more complete, more accurate, or more favorable to any candidate or party, and free users are never shown a degraded or altered version of the same figure.

5. Donations

PartyLine accepts voluntary financial support. Donations are not tax-deductible charitable contributions — PartyLine is not a registered nonprofit organization. Donations are not refundable, do not purchase Premium access, and do not entitle any donor to influence over PartyLine's data, methodology, scoring, rankings, or the presentation of any candidate or officeholder.

6. Classroom Mode

Educators using Classroom Mode acknowledge and agree to the following:

Classroom Mode is intended for supervised educational settings.
Student participation does not require accounts, names, or email addresses. Responses are stored with a random identifier and cannot be traced back to individual students.
Aggregated classroom results are only displayed when 5 or more students have participated to prevent individual identification.
Educators are responsible for obtaining any required parental or institutional consent before using the Service in a classroom.
Class data is retained according to our Privacy Policy retention schedule and may be deleted after the class expires.

7. Sample Ballots, Straw Polls, and Aggregate Results

Nothing you do in PartyLine is a vote. PartyLine is not an election authority, is not affiliated with any government or election office, and is not connected to any election system. Marking a sample ballot, answering a survey question, or taking part in a straw poll inside PartyLine:

is not legally binding and has no legal effect of any kind;
does not cast, transmit, submit, or record an official vote;
does not register you to vote, request or return a mail ballot, or communicate anything to any election official; and
is not a substitute for voting. To vote, you must do so through your state or county election authority.

A straw poll in PartyLine is an informal, non-binding expression of preference, offered to help people in an area see what other PartyLine users say they intend to do. It is not an official ballot, not an election, not a scientific opinion poll, and not a forecast or prediction of any result.

What aggregate figures are, and are not. Where the Service shows aggregate figures drawn from users — issue positions, match distributions, or straw-poll marks:

They describe PartyLine users who chose to participate. They do not describe the residents of any district, the electorate, or likely voters, and they are not weighted or adjusted to do so.
Participants select themselves. That is not a flaw we can engineer away, and no minimum sample size makes such a figure representative.
Figures are only displayed once a minimum number of participants is reached, so that no individual can be identified from an aggregate. Below that threshold, we show nothing.
They change as people change their minds, and are a snapshot of the moment they are displayed.
Sample size is displayed alongside any such figure.

Your consent to aggregation. If you mark a sample ballot, those marks may be counted in aggregate figures as described above. We will tell you this where you mark, not only here, and we will tell you before the first mark is counted. You may opt out of aggregation at any time and still keep full use of ballot marking for your own planning. Your individual marks are never shown to other users, never attributed to you publicly, and never sold.

What we will not do with this data. We do not sell, license, or provide individual-level marks or responses to any campaign, party, candidate, committee, political vendor, or data broker. We do not publish crosstabs by party affiliation or demographic characteristics. Any future change to these limits will be announced in advance and will apply only to data collected after the change takes effect.

Conduct. Attempting to distort an aggregate figure — by creating multiple accounts, by automated submission, or by any comparable means — is a violation of Section 10 and grounds for removing the affected data and terminating the accounts involved.

8. Data & Accuracy

PartyLine aggregates publicly available data, including roll-call voting records, official bill summaries, candidate information, and legislative activity. While we work to be accurate:

We do not guarantee the completeness or timeliness of any data, and coverage is not uniform across offices. It is deepest for the U.S. Congress and thinner or entirely absent for state and local offices.
Not every person has a score. Where the evidence for an individual is insufficient, we show no score rather than an estimate. An absent score is a statement about our data, not a judgment about that person.
Some figures are estimates, and are labeled as such where they appear. A candidate who has not held office has no voting record; where a position is inferred rather than drawn from that individual's own record, the Service marks it as an estimate.
The issue a vote is assigned to, and the direction a "yes" is treated as pointing, are produced with automated assistance and human review. They can be wrong. We correct them when they are, and we keep a record of the corrections.
A match score compares your stated positions to a recorded record. It is not an endorsement, a recommendation, a rating of anyone's quality or fitness, or advice about how to vote.
Our methodology is publicly documented, and the specific records behind any score can be inspected in the Service.
Verify information through official sources before making decisions based on it. If you find an error, tell us at support@mypartyline.org — corrections are welcome.

9. Intellectual Property

All content, design, code, and data compilations on PartyLine are the property of PartyLine or its licensors. You may not reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from our content without prior written permission, except for personal, non-commercial use.

The underlying public voting record data remains in the public domain.

10. Prohibited Conduct

You agree not to:

Use the Service for any unlawful purpose
Attempt to gain unauthorized access to any part of the Service
Scrape, crawl, or use automated means to access the Service at a rate that degrades performance for other users
Misrepresent your identity or affiliation
Interfere with or disrupt the Service's infrastructure
Create multiple accounts, or use automated means, to distort any aggregate figure, straw poll, or match distribution
Present PartyLine output as an official election result, an endorsement, or a communication from an election authority

11. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

PartyLine is a civic information tool, not a source of legal, political, or professional advice.

PartyLine is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any government body, election authority, political party, candidate, campaign, or committee. Nothing in the Service is an endorsement of, or opposition to, any candidate or ballot measure.

12. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, PARTYLINE SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA, REVENUE, OR PROFITS, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING FROM THESE TERMS OR YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE SHALL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM.

13. Governing Law

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to conflict of law principles. Any disputes shall be resolved in the courts located in Travis County, Texas.

14. Language

These Terms are published in English and Spanish. The Spanish version is provided for your convenience; in the event of any conflict between the two, the English version governs. If any part of these Terms is unclear to you in either language, contact us at support@mypartyline.org and we will explain it.

15. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by posting a notice on the Service and sending an email to account holders. Your continued use after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.

One exception, because it cannot be fixed after the fact: we will not apply a broadened data-use term to data you already gave us. If we ever widen how user responses or ballot marks may be used or displayed, the wider terms apply only to data collected after the change, and we will ask again rather than assume.

16. Contact

If you have questions about these Terms, contact us at:

Email: support@mypartyline.org

← Back to PartyLine