Privacy, in plain English
Last updated September 3, 2026
What we collect
Before the cards, we ask only for your ZIP so we can build the right local ballot. We save your issue-card responses and interaction signals such as decision time, undo, expansion, and input method to create your matches. We also receive basic technical information, including a salted hash of your IP address and a shortened browser identifier. If you create an account, we collect your email and any optional name, phone number, or reminder choices you provide.
Optional research questions
Age range and ethnicity are optional and appear only after results for an account holder. They are saved only when an adult affirmatively agrees to include that saved session in possible future aggregate research. Declining does not change the ballot, matches, or account. Consent can be withdrawn; withdrawal removes those optional demographics and excludes the session from reports produced after withdrawal. It cannot recall statistics already delivered in a completed aggregate report.
Exact-district lookup
If you choose exact districts, your typed address is sent to Esri for suggestions and to the U.S. Census geocoder; Wake County coordinates may also be checked against Wake County GIS. PoliMatch uses the result to save district labels, then discards the street address and coordinates instead of storing them in its database. Those providers process the lookup under their own policies.
What partners may receive
We do not sell or share individual profiles, contact information, raw card responses, exact locations, or row-level records. No partner release program or live partner database access is active. A future program may provide or sell only immutable, delayed, disclosure-reviewed aggregate snapshot reports from authenticated adults who opted in. It cannot launch until append-only consent and release records exist. Each candidate group must include at least 25 eligible accounts and pass additional small-cell and dominance checks. Reports contain no user or session IDs, free-form fields, or profile and match-breakdown JSON. PoliMatch does not show political ads.
Retention and deletion
An anonymous access key works for 30 days so the creating browser can resume its session. At expiration the session becomes inaccessible, and the next successful daily maintenance pass normally removes its card responses, interaction data, profiles, and match results from the active application database within about 24 hours. Cleanup failures are reported for operator retry. Saving a session to an account before expiration moves it to account retention, where it remains available until the account is deleted. Delete Account in My Results removes the account, contact and reminder records, saved sessions, card responses, profiles, and match results from the active application database. It also clears PoliMatch identity, response, location, session data, and cached result pages from the current browser. Encrypted service-provider backups may retain a copy until their normal expiration and are not available through the product. Used or expired password-reset tokens are routinely purged.
Your choices
Exact-district lookup, research demographics, aggregate-research consent, and reminders are optional. You can use the core matching flow without an account. A voter can withdraw aggregate-research consent from that session's results page. Account holders can change reminder settings or delete their account from My Results.