Legal
How AmericanElectionHQ collects, uses, and protects the information you share with us.
Last Updated: April 26, 2026 · Effective: April 26, 2026
AmericanElectionHQ is operated as an independent civic project. For privacy questions or to exercise the rights described below, contact privacy@americanelectionhq.com.
This policy describes what information AmericanElectionHQ collects when you use the platform, how we use it, and your rights regarding that data.
When you participate in a poll, we collect: your vote selection and likelihood-to-vote rating (Step 1); your first name, last name, email address, ZIP code, and optionally your phone number (Step 2); optional enrichment data including party affiliation, ideology, top issue, and address (Step 3); and your supporter action preferences — volunteer, donate, receive updates — if you choose to provide them (Step 4). We also collect a browser session identifier generated locally in your browser and used for deduplication purposes. We do not collect payment information. We do not require account creation.
If you create an account, you can optionally add additional profile data on the preferences page: your birth year, voter registration status, how often you vote in primaries and general elections, whether you’ve ever donated to a campaign, volunteered for a campaign, or attended a political event, and the news sources you rely on. All of these fields are optional. We use this information for personalization (matching you with races on your ballot) and for polling crosstabs (anonymized aggregate breakdowns of poll results across demographic groups). Your individual responses are never attributed to your name in any public display.
We use your information to: record and display poll results; send you election updates and alerts if you opt in; route your contact information to candidate campaign teams if you request supporter actions; understand the composition of our participant base at an aggregate level; and improve the platform. We do not sell your personal information to third parties.
We share your information with the third-party service providers described in the “Who Has Access to Your Data” section below — they process data on our behalf under contractual data-protection terms — and, only if you explicitly request a supporter action for a specific candidate, with that candidate’s campaign team. We do not share or sell your information with advertisers, data brokers, or political parties for their independent use.
We retain poll responses and the contact information attached to them for the operational lifetime of the platform — there is no automated purge schedule today. Aggregated and anonymized statistics may be retained indefinitely. We are working toward a published retention policy with class-by-class purge windows; until that is in place, you can request deletion at any time using the process below and we will remove your personally identifiable fields within 30 days.
Regardless of where you live, you can:
We do not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights. We respond to verified requests within 30 days. If we need to verify your identity, we will reply with the smallest amount of additional information we need.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The “Last Updated” date at the top reflects the most recent revision. Material changes will be communicated by updating the effective date and, where appropriate, by a notice on the platform itself. Continued use of the platform after a change constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.
For privacy questions, contact privacy@americanelectionhq.com.
We use a small number of trusted third-party services to operate the platform. Here’s where your data goes and why.
A managed database and authentication provider holds your votes, contact info, and account data. Encrypted at rest and in transit. US-based.
A hosting provider serves the website and runs the code that handles your requests. A separate security / CDN provider sits in front to protect against attacks and verify form submissions are coming from real humans.
Victory Frameworksis our voter relationship management (VRM) platform. If you sign up for updates or opt in during a vote, your contact information syncs there so we can send election alerts, results updates, and (where you’ve opted in) supporter-action requests to candidate campaigns.
Error monitoring, analytics, and mapping providers help us measure performance, fix bugs, and display geographic data. None of these receive your contact information; they receive technical event data about platform usage.
When you sign in with a third-party account (such as Google), the provider shares your name, email, and profile picture with us — nothing else. We support Google as our primary OAuth provider.
We use additional infrastructure providers for rate limiting, AI tooling for editorial workflows, and similar internal needs. None of these receive voter contact information.
For a current named list of all our service providers, see our Vendor List or email privacy@americanelectionhq.com. We update the list whenever something changes.
If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), gives you specific rights regarding your personal information. We honor those rights for all users regardless of residency, but call them out explicitly here for California users.
To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@americanelectionhq.com. We may ask you to verify your identity by confirming your email or another identifier on file. You may also designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf; the agent must provide written authorization.
AmericanElectionHQ is intended for adult civic participation and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, please email privacy@americanelectionhq.com and we will delete the information promptly.
Users between 13 and 17 may use the platform with the consent of a parent or guardian. We do not require account creation to participate in polls.
We take reasonable and appropriate measures to protect your personal information against loss, theft, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. These measures include:
No system is perfectly secure. If we ever experience a security incident affecting your personal information, we will notify affected users without unreasonable delay and as required by applicable law.
Your information is stored and processed in data centers located in the United States. We do not intentionally transfer personal information outside the United States. If you access the platform from outside the US, you consent to the transfer of your information to and processing in the US, where data protection laws may differ from those in your jurisdiction.
This section describes in more detail how we use the data you provide when participating in polls or subscribing to updates.
Your vote selection, likelihood-to-vote rating, and any enrichment data you provide are used to: calculate and display live poll results; generate aggregate breakdowns (by party, issue, geography) visible to our editorial team; and improve our understanding of voter sentiment trends. We display results in aggregate — no individual response is attributed to a named participant in public-facing displays.
Your name, email, and ZIP are used to: prevent duplicate submissions by associating responses with real people; send you election alerts and platform updates if you opt in to our newsletter; and route you to candidate campaign teams if you request a supporter action. Contact information is never sold or shared with third-party advertisers.
If you subscribe to our newsletter — either through the subscribe form or by opting in during a poll — we will send you race updates, results summaries, and election alerts. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in any email we send.
If you select volunteer, donate, or receive campaign updates during Step 4 of the poll flow, your contact information is shared with the relevant candidate campaign team to facilitate that connection. This is entirely voluntary and clearly labeled at the point of opt-in.
We may publish aggregated, anonymized statistics derived from response data — for example, “60% of respondents in Ohio identified as Independent.” These reports contain no information that could identify individual participants.
AmericanElectionHQ is an independent project with no affiliation with any candidate, political party, PAC, government entity, or ideological organization.
We are not funded by any political campaign, party, or affiliated organization. We do not accept donations or sponsorships from candidates, campaigns, or political committees.
Coverage decisions — which races we add, how we present candidates, which polls we publish — are made solely by our editorial team. No outside party has any influence over these decisions.
Our results reflect who chooses to participate on this platform. We do not adjust, weight, or suppress results to favor any candidate or party. The only responses we remove are those we determine to be manipulated or fraudulent.
We present candidates from all parties on equal footing using the same poll structure, the same result display, and the same data standards.
If you believe our coverage of a specific race is biased or unfair, contact editorial@americanelectionhq.com. We take these concerns seriously and review all credible complaints.
This section describes your rights and our obligations when you provide your phone number or consent to receive communications from AmericanElectionHQ or affiliated campaigns.
If you provide your phone number during the poll flow or through a subscribe form, you may receive SMS text messages from AmericanElectionHQ. These messages may include election alerts, results notifications, and platform updates. Message frequency varies. Standard message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out at any time. Reply HELP for help. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.
If you select a supporter action during Step 4 of the poll flow (volunteer, donate, or receive campaign updates), your contact information — including your phone number if provided — is forwarded to the relevant candidate campaign. Communications from that campaign are governed by the campaign’s own privacy and messaging practices, not ours. We encourage you to review those practices before opting in.
By providing your phone number and completing Step 2 of the poll flow, you consent to receive communications as described above. You may opt out of AmericanElectionHQ SMS communications at any time by replying STOP to any message we send, or by contacting us at privacy@americanelectionhq.com. Opting out of our communications does not automatically opt you out of communications from campaign teams to whom we have already forwarded your information.
For questions about messaging consent or to opt out of communications, contact privacy@americanelectionhq.com.