Privacy & cookies

The Gist is a nonpartisan voter guide. We collect as little as possible, and we do not use advertising or analytics trackers.

Cookies we use

We set cookies only when you sign in, and only the ones needed to keep you signed in. They are “strictly necessary” cookies — there are no advertising, analytics or cross-site tracking cookies, so there is nothing to opt in or out of.

• gist_member — set when a verified candidate or campaign signs in to the candidate portal. It identifies your account so you can manage your own candidates. Expires after 14 days, or when you sign out.
• gist_admin — set when a Gist editor signs in to the admin. It keeps the editor signed in and expires after 12 hours, or when they sign out.

Both cookies are signed so they can't be tampered with, are marked HttpOnly (JavaScript can't read them) and Secure (sent only over HTTPS), and are scoped to this site. If you never sign in, The Gist sets no cookies at all.

Your picks. When you tap Pick on a candidate or mark how you plan to vote on a question, your choice is saved in your own browser's storage, on that device only. It is never sent to us, we can't see it, and clearing your browser data (or Clear my picks) erases it.

What we collect

• Address lookup. When you look up your ballot by address, we send it to the U.S. Census Bureau's geocoding service to find your voting districts. We don't store your address, and only the resulting district codes — never your address or coordinates — appear in the page URL.
• Accounts. For verified campaigns and editors we store the account details you provide (name, email, organization) and a securely hashed password. We keep a log of changes made through the portal so editors can moderate content.
• Abuse prevention. When you apply for access or report content, we store a one-way fingerprint (not your actual address) of your network address to limit spam and abuse.

Ballot updates

If you sign up for ballot updates, we store only what's needed to send them:

• your email address;
• the voting district codes for your ballot (the same ones in your ballot's web address, such as your municipality and school district) — never your street address, which is used once to find your districts and then discarded;
• your preferences, and a record of which updates and reminders we've already sent you.

We use this information only to send the updates you chose. We never sell, rent, trade or share it, and never use it for fundraising, campaigning, advertising or anything else. Campaigns and parties, including those with portal accounts, can't see who has signed up. We don't store your name or your network address with your sign-up.

Emails are delivered by our email provider, Resend, which processes your email address only to deliver our messages. We don't use open or click tracking, so we don't know whether you read an update.

Nothing is sent until you confirm by email, and sign-ups that aren't confirmed within 7 days are deleted. Every email has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing permanently deletes your email address, districts and preferences. It doesn't just flag them.

Short links

Links we share with news outlets, libraries and community groups look like thegist.vote/go/…. When one is opened, we add one to that link's count for the day, so we know which outreach is working. The count is all the link keeps: no cookie, and nothing about who opened it.

Server logs and page counts

Like every website, ours keeps a technical log of each request: the page, the time, your network (IP) address, your browser type and the page that linked here. It's used only to keep the site running and to block attacks. The log itself is overwritten within hours, and our security monitor deletes its records within two weeks.

From that log we keep just one thing: how many times each page was opened each day, and how many of those visits came from a search engine or another website. It tells us which races people are looking up, so we research those first. The counts say nothing about who visited.

What we don't do

• No advertising, no ad networks, no selling of data.
• No selling, renting or sharing of email addresses, and no use of them for fundraising or campaigns.
• No analytics or tracking cookies, and no cross-site tracking.
• No profiling of voters. The site works without an account and without accepting anything.

Questions

See how The Gist works for how we build the guide, or use the correction and reporting tools throughout the site to reach the editors.