Privacy Policy

Vote.org has created this privacy policy to explain how Vote.org (or “we,” “us,” “our”) use information that we collect about you online and offline while you visit the Vote.org website, currently located at www.vote.org (the “Site”), while you use a Vote.org tool that is embedded on another website, or otherwise interact with us (the “Services”). Vote.org may modify this policy from time to time, so we encourage you to check this page when revisiting the Site. The date of the most recent revision is listed above.

Personal information we collect

Depending on your use of our Services, we may collect the following categories of personal information:

Identifiers: Name, government-issued identification number, email address, mailing address, phone number, username or account name or similar identifiers.
Demographics: Age, race, gender, and date of birth.
Internet or Other Network Information: Information regarding your interactions with our websites or online tools.
Geolocation Information: Including device location that is more granular than a city or town.
Commercial Information: Such as a history of donations made to Vote.org.
Outside Information and Inferences: We may obtain information about you from outside sources and combine it with information we collect through this Site, from any of the foregoing categories of information.
Sensitive Personal Information: Personal information revealing racial and ethnic origin.

How we use your information

We collect, use, disclose and otherwise process personal information for the purposes set forth below:

To provide you use of the Services.
Communication with you: including to send you news and information about Vote.org and issues concerning voting, to measure the effectiveness of our programs, to send you timely election reminders via email and SMS/text, to provide products and services you request (and send related information), to operate our Services, to communicate with you about your access to and use of our Services, to respond to your inquiries, to provide troubleshooting, to fulfill your requests and provide technical support, and for other customer service and support purposes.
- You may opt-out of receiving email messages from Vote.org by visiting our Privacy Portal or by following the unsubscribe link at the bottom of each email. You may unsubscribe from text messages at any time by replying “STOP” to any text message you receive from Vote.org. For help, text “HELP” to any text message you receive from Vote.org. You consent that following such a request to unsubscribe, you may receive one final text message from Vote.org confirming your request.
Analyzing and improving our organization: including to better understand how users access and use our Services; to evaluate and improve our Services and operations; to develop new features, offerings, and services; to conduct surveys and other evaluations; and for other research and analytical purposes.
Securing and protecting our organization: including to protect and secure our operations, assets, Services, network and information and technology resources and to investigate, prevent, detect and take action regarding fraud, unauthorized access, situations involving potential threats to the rights or safety of any person or third party, or other unauthorized activities or misconduct.
Defending our legal rights: including to manage and respond to actual and potential legal disputes and claims, and to otherwise establish, defend or protect our rights or interests, including in the context of anticipated or actual litigation with third parties.
Planning and facilitating restructuring transactions: related to any actual or contemplated merger, acquisition, asset sale or transfer, financing, bankruptcy or restructuring of all or part of our organization.
Auditing, reporting, corporate governance, and internal operations: including relating to financial, and accounting audits; audits and assessments of our operations, privacy, security and financial controls, risk, and compliance with legal obligations; and our general business, accounting, record keeping and legal functions.
Complying with legal obligations: including to comply with the law, our legal obligations and legal process, such as warrants, subpoenas, court orders, and regulatory or law enforcement requests.

The purposes for which we may process personal information will vary depending upon the circumstances.
We may also aggregate and and/or anonymize personal information and analyze that information for statistical or any other purposes permitted by law. When we do so, we take reasonable precautions to ensure the information cannot be associated with an identifiable user and we maintain and use the information in deidentified form, except that may we attempt to reidentify such information to determine whether our deidentification processes satisfy applicable legal requirements. After being deidentified, the information is no longer personal information and is not subject to this Privacy Policy.

Sources of personal information

We collect personal information directly from users when you interact with us. We also collect personal information from vendors and third parties when they provide information to us. For example, we may receive names and addresses of registered voters from other organizations. We also collect personal information from vendors and third-party providers of cookies and other tracking technologies used on our Services.

How we disclose personal information

We disclose the categories of personal information listed in this Privacy Policy as detailed below:

Third Party Sites and Plugins: If you register to vote, donate to Vote.org, check your registration status, request an absentee ballot, or sign up for election reminders through an embedded version of Vote.org’s tools on a third party partner’s website, any information you provide in doing so may be made available to the third party partner through whose site you accessed Vote.org’s tools.
Advertisers: Third-party cookies, as described in “Cookies and data tracking” are shared with third-party vendors for advertising purposes, including Google, which will be shown on other sites on the internet. In some cases, those third-party vendors may decide which ads to show you based on your prior visits to the Site. If you prefer to opt out of the use of these third-party cookies on the Site, you can do so by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt out page.
Local or State Municipalities: After you mail in or electronically submit your voter registration application form to local or state election officials, it generally becomes a matter of public record from your state of residence. This means it will be available for inspection and use by candidates for public office and their campaign organizations as well as by others who satisfy the requirements of the State law governing its use.
Other Services providers and Advisors: We may share your personal information to third parties that support our IT, perform data analytics and optimization, send communications to our users, or provide us with legal or financial advice and help us deliver our Services to you.
Government, Regulators, and Law Enforcement: Vote.org will challenge any attempt to gain access to the information you give us by government agencies or private organizations. In the unlikely event that we are required by law to disclose any of your information we will do our best to contact you first so that you may have the opportunity to object to the disclosure. We will also independently object to any requests for access to information about users of our Site that we believe to be improper.

When sharing information with third parties, we try to de-identify any such information, to further protect your personal information but complete de-identification may not be possible and personal information may be shared with third parties, as described above.

"Do Not Track"

Do Not Track ("DNT") is a privacy preference that users can set in certain web browsers. Please note that we do not respond to or honor DNT signals or similar mechanisms transmitted by web browsers.

Security and retention

Vote.org uses industry-standard security measures to protect the information collected by this Site, and to authenticate your identity or the identity of an agent authorized by you when exercising a data right described above, but we cannot guarantee complete security.

We retain personal information for the period reasonably necessary to provide our services to you, support our reasonable business operational purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy and ensure compliance with applicable law.

Use of services by minors

Our Services are not intended for children under age 13 and are not designed to attract the attention of anyone under age 13. Further, in compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, Vote.org does not knowingly solicit or collect personally identifying information from children under 13 years of age. We will promptly remove any personal information from children under 13 upon notice to us. We instruct children under the age of 13 not to enroll in Pledge to Register and do not allow any child under the age of 13 to do so. Children under the age of 13 should ask their parent or legal guardian for assistance when using Vote.org and should not submit any personally identifying information to Vote.org. If you are a parent or guardian and believe we have collected personal information from your child in error, please contact us immediately using the contact information at the end of this Privacy Policy.

Cookies and data tracking

In order to better serve our supporters, we use cookies and other tracking technologies and periodically analyze web logs. Some cookies are used to pre-populate forms for you so that on repeat visits to the Site you don’t need to re-enter certain information. You can set your browser to disable cookies but functionality of the Site may be limited without the use of cookies.

We also may use third-party services such as Google Analytics. This helps us understand traffic patterns and know if there are problems with our Site. We also may use embedded images in emails to track open rates for our mailings, so that we can tell which mailings appeal most to Vote.org supporters.

Information is generated by a cookie about your use of our Site (including your IP address); when we place a Google cookie on your browser, that information is transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States and is subject to Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where Google is legally required, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google can combine your IP address with any other data held by Google.

URLs contained in emails may contain an ID that enables us to correctly identify the person who takes an action using a web page. We use these URLs to simplify the process of signing petitions and filling out surveys. We may occasionally present a shortened URL that references a longer URL which you can see in the browser’s address bar when you access the page.

Links to other sites

This Privacy Policy does not apply to ANY external links or any website not owned and operated by Vote.org. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content provided by such third parties, and we make no representations or endorsements about them. Third party sites will have their own policies which may be different from ours and we recommend that you check the privacy policy of each site that you visit.

Additional disclosures for certain US residents

This section provides disclosures and information applicable to residents of certain US states with comprehensive privacy laws that apply to Vote.org.

Data Subject Rights. Residents of some US states have certain rights with respect to the processing of their personal information. Depending on your state of residence, you may have rights to access, correct, and delete your personal information, or to opt out of certain types of processing of personal information. For example:

Colorado Residents. Colorado residents have rights to access, correct, and delete their personal information, to obtain their personal information in a portable format, to opt out of sales of their personal information, processing of their personal information for purposes of targeted advertising, and profiling of their personal information in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects, and to revoke their consent to certain types of processing activities. Vote.org does not sell your personal information or use it in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects.

Exercising Data Subject Rights & Authorized Agents. To exercise data subject rights applicable to you, please email us at one of the addresses listed below. Residents of some states, including Colorado, may also authorize an agent to make data subject requests on your behalf. In such instances, authorized agents may use the same method as you to submit requests on your behalf. To verify your identity and protect your personal information, we may ask the requestor to provide information that will enable us to verify your identity in order to comply with your data subject request, such as asking your agent to provide proof of signed permission from you, or ask you to confirm with us directly that you provided the agent with permission to submit the request. In some instances, we may decline to honor your request if an exception applies under applicable law. We will respond to your request consistent with applicable law.

To exercise your data subject rights, please visit our Privacy Portal.

Appeal. You may appeal any decision of ours relating to the foregoing data rights, by contacting us at info+pii-appeal@vote.org. If you have any concerns about the results of your appeal, you may contact your state Attorney General.

Colorado Residents’ rights in relation to sensitive information

Depending on how and why you interact with the Services, some of the personal information that we may collect or infer and use about you may be considered “sensitive personal information” or “sensitive data inferences” under Colorado Law in certain circumstances. We may collect or infer the following categories of sensitive personal information about you:

Demographic information (e.g. racial or ethnic origin);

We only collect your sensitive personal information when you voluntarily provide this information to us and provide clear, specific, opt-in consent. If you would like to withdraw consent to our use of your sensitive personal information, please visit our Privacy Portal. We will respond to your request as required by applicable laws.

Other Disclosures

Direct Marketing: California Civil Code § 1798.83 permits California residents to annually request certain information regarding our disclosure of personal information to other entities for their direct marketing purposes in the preceding calendar year. To make such a request, please send an email to info+shinethelight@vote.org with the subject “Shine the Light Request.”
Disclosure for Nevada Residents: To the extent we collect personal information that identifies you through an online website or service among the categories of personal information listed in this Privacy Policy, we do not sell that personal information for monetary consideration.

Amendments and consent to this privacy policy By using and/or visiting our Site, you understand and agree to be bound by this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this Privacy Policy, please do not use the Site or the Services.

How to contact us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy you may contact us by sending an e-mail to info+privacy-policy@vote.org.

You can also write to us at the following address:

Vote.org
1763 Columbia Road NW, Ste 175
PMB 239712
Washington, District of Columbia 20009