Guide · 12

Privacy & what we never show

The public map is built from public totals. It never shows an individual voter, donor or protected address.

What we never show on the public map

• Individual voters. No names, addresses, birth dates or voting histories. Every voter figure (registered, voted, primary voters, Spanish surname) is a precinct total.
• Donors. No names or addresses of people who gave to a campaign, federal or state.
• Single households. No dots at a home. Voter numbers are shown only for whole precincts.
• Protected addresses. Address-confidentiality records (victims of violence, judges, police) are never shown.
• Third-party party data. We don't load RNC Data Trust, i360, Catalist or VAN data.

Why

Voter files are for political use only

Most states limit what a voter list may be used for, and every state bars commercial use. Texas, for example, bars advertising and other commercial use of voter-registration information (Texas Election Code §18.009). A public, commercial map of named voters would break those rules and put people at risk. That's why voter information on the public map is only ever an aggregate.

Contributor names can't be used commercially

Federal law says information copied from FEC reports "may not be sold or used" for soliciting contributions or for commercial purposes (52 U.S.C. §30111(a)(4)). The one exception is a political committee's own name and address. So committee offices can appear as pins, but donors cannot.

Census data can't identify anyone

Census terms forbid using Census data, alone or combined with other data, to identify a person, household or business. Demographic and Spanish-surname figures are shown only as precinct shares.

What party users can see

The Republican view adds the party's own published information, such as chair phone numbers and email addresses, clubs and officers. These come from the party's own roster. Any individual-level data we add in future will appear only in logged-in party views, and only for users whose organisation is eligible to receive it under that state's law. Access will be limited to the user's own area, logged, and covered by a signed statement of permitted use.

Your own data

The site remembers your party view and panel layout on your device (browser storage). Shared links carry the view, not who you are. Voice questions to Ruby are processed to answer them. Don't say personal information about other people to Ruby.

Cookies

We use no advertising, analytics or tracking cookies, and we don't sell or share your personal information. That's why there is no cookie banner. The only cookies we set are the ones the site needs to work:

• Sign-in (__Host-pe_sid, __Host-pe_oauth): keep you signed in after you choose to sign in with Google. Set only when you sign in.
• Form safety (__Host-pe_form): protects the access and support forms from cross-site forgery. It lasts six hours.
• Demo pass (__Host-pe_guest): set only when you open a demo link.

All of them are HttpOnly and Secure, and they're bound to geopoliticalearth.com. Pages can't read them, and they're never sent to another site.

Services the page loads

The map imagery and fonts come from their providers: Cesium ion, Esri, Google Maps Platform and Google Fonts. Your browser contacts them to fetch the images, and they see your IP address the way any website does. The newsletter form is beehiiv's; your email goes to beehiiv only when you subscribe. Payments for Support the build go through Stripe's checkout, so we never see your card.

Your party affiliation, if you choose to tell us

Your account page has one optional question: your party affiliation. The choices are Unaffiliated, Republican, Democrat, Independent Party and Prefer not to say. Every account starts as Not answered, and you can leave it that way. Nothing depends on it: skipping the question doesn't change your access, your map or your profile.

• What we use it for. Only combined statistics about the Political Eye community, such as the share of members who are Republican, Democrat or unaffiliated, overall and by home state. We may use and publish those combined figures.
• Who sees your answer. Only you, on your account page. It is never shown on your profile or to other members, and it is not part of the community profile, even if you opt in to that.
• What our team sees. Our admin pages and exports show totals only: counts and percentages, never a list of who answered what. Any total of fewer than five people is hidden and shown as “<5”, so no one can be singled out.
• What we never do. We never sell your answer, and we never share or publish it as individual data.
• Where it is kept. In our own database, with your account, so that you can see it and change it. We also keep the date you last changed it.
• Changing or clearing it. Change your answer on your account page at any time. To clear it, choose Not answered and save; that removes the answer from your account straight away.

The party switch on the map (Everyone, Republican, Democratic) is a display setting. It is not this question, and we don't treat it as your affiliation.