Privacy policy

“Reading the site”

You can read everything on the site without an account. We do not run advertising, third-party analytics or tracking scripts, and the site sets no cookies for reading. Like any website, our hosting provider processes technical information such as your IP address to deliver pages. All styling and interface code is served from our own domain. Member pages show official portraits loaded from Congress.gov, which receives standard request information from your browser (we send no referrer with those requests).

“How we count readers”

We count page views with our own cookieless counter, on our own servers. For each public page served we add one to a daily total kept for that page and for the website that linked to it (only its hostname, such as news.example.com, never the full address). That is all we keep: the day, the page path, the referring site’s hostname and the counts. We do not store your IP address, user agent, any cookie or device identifier, and we cannot tell whether two views came from the same person. Visits from automated crawlers are counted separately. Account, sign-in and admin pages are not counted.

“If you create an account”

We store what the account needs to work, and nothing else:

• your email address and a one-way (bcrypt) hash of your password; we never store the password itself;
• a name, only if you choose to give one (optional, never shown publicly);
• whether and when you verified your email address, and when you last changed your password;
• single-use links for email verification (72 hours) and password reset (1 hour), stored only as one-way hashes;
• if you join a coalition as a constituent of an official: a one-way hash of the address and ZIP you give, not the address itself;
• account settings, such as your role and verification status.

Verification and password-reset emails are sent through our email provider (Zoho Mail) and carry no tracking pixels. When you sign in, the site stores a sign-in token in your browser’s local storage so you stay signed in. It expires after 24 hours, signing out removes it, and a password reset invalidates it. We do not use advertising cookies.

“Citizen Consensus votes”

• Your home ZIP code (optional). If you add it, we store the 5-digit ZIP, the optional ZIP+4, the state and congressional district it maps to, how the district was chosen (one district for the ZIP, or the one you picked), and a dated log of changes. We use it only to count your votes in your state and district. We never ask for your street address. You can remove it on your account page.
• Your votes and reasons. Your support / oppose / unsure vote on each Solution or Think Tank idea, when you cast or changed it, and an optional reason. We publish only aggregate results (and only at 30+ verified votes); we never publish who voted which way. A reason is shown, without your name, only if an editor approves it.
• Integrity signals. With each vote we store a salted one-way hash of your connection’s IP address and of a random browser identifier the site keeps in local storage (vfa_device). They are used only for rate limits and to hold out duplicate or coordinated votes, and they cannot be reversed into your IP address.
• Deleting. “Delete my account” on your account page deletes the account, your votes, reasons, ZIP record and these signals immediately.

“Follows and alerts”

• What you follow. Each bill, presidential action, member of Congress, Constitution provision, SI Think Tank topic, policy area or “my district” you follow is stored with your account and the time you followed it. We never publish who follows what, and we never share it.
• Your alerts. For each public event that matches something you follow (a grade, a Solution, a bill action, a roll-call vote, a correction) we store one row: which event, when it arrived, and whether you have read it or it was emailed. The events themselves are public records already on the site.
• “My district”. Uses the district from the home ZIP code on your account; we store nothing extra. Remove the ZIP code and district alerts stop.
• Email settings. Your email schedule (instant, daily, weekly or off), quiet hours and time zone, a one-click unsubscribe token, and, if you create one, a secret RSS feed link you can reset at any time. Alert emails go only to verified addresses, carry no tracking pixels and are sent through our email provider (Zoho Mail).
• Deleting. Unfollow anything on your alerts page. “Delete my account” deletes your follows, alerts and email settings with the account, immediately.

“If you subscribe to the weekly digest”

We store your email address, whether and when you confirmed, and when you unsubscribed, and use it only to send the digest. Digest emails are sent through our email provider (Zoho Mail) and carry no tracking pixels. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe link; after you unsubscribe we keep the address only to honor that choice. Email hello@valuesforamerica.com to have it deleted.

“What you do on the site”

• Other votes. Earlier Think Tank upvotes and downvotes and any Republic Vote ballots are stored with your account. We publish totals, not who voted which way.
• Grievances and proposals. Text you submit to the Navigator or the Policy Portal is stored with your account and is processed by SI. To do that, it is sent to a model provider through OpenRouter. Do not include sensitive personal information you do not want processed this way.

“What we never do”

• We do not sell, rent or license personal data.
• We do not share personal data with campaigns, parties or advertisers.
• We do not build profiles of private citizens. Our public records concern public officials acting in their public roles, and campaign-finance data on the site never names private individual donors.
• We disclose personal data to a government agency only when legally required.

“Service providers”

We use a small number of providers to run the site: our hosting and database provider, and OpenRouter and the model providers it routes to for SI processing. They process data only to provide those services.

“Your choices”

You can ask us for a copy of your account data, or ask us to correct or delete it, by emailing hello@valuesforamerica.com from the address on your account. The site is not intended for children under 13.

“Changes”

When this draft is finalized, or if our practices change, we will update this page and note the date.