Much of the software behind DemoChoice is released under the GNU General Public License. The "Disclaimer of
Warranty" and "Limitation of Liability" sections (15-17 of version 3) apply to all software on the DemoChoice website, to the administration of the site, and to claims of features and business practices. Interception of data by unauthorized parties and misuse of data are among the damages referred to in the liability section.
Our ultimate goal is not to "monetize" you, but to help you learn about ranked-choice voting, and preferably convince you that it should be used
more widely, including in government elections, ranging from local to national. That will not happen if we do not earn your trust. Much of the
software behind DemoChoice is released under the GNU General Public License in support of these goals. A potential drawback of this is that
others may use the software to create websites that are less trustworthy. Please let us know if you observe this.
Information gathered
We record your vote (of course). Your email address may have been given to us by the creator of your poll. The software is
designed to request that from you when you vote, or send you a registration key by email to authenticate your vote. The only other
planned uses of your email address are to contact you to clarify any problems with the recording of your vote, or to respond to an
inquiry made by you.
On our poll setup form, other people can enter information about you that is then visible on the web, by making you a candidate or
subject of a poll. Of course, others can post information about you just about anywhere on the web, and not just here. If
something objectionable is posted about you here, please let us know.
Email practices
For some polls, DemoChoice uses email to send unique web link to a voter's ballot (see the voter registration
instructions) and to poll creators so they can edit their polls. Voter email addresses are provided by a poll creator. If you
are receiving multiple unwanted emails from DemoChoice, we do not want this either, so please let us know. In
general, email has security vulnerabilities, which can depend on the software that you use to read it. One helpful practice is to
confirm that the actual link in an email (which may differ from the address shown in the email message body) goes to the desired
website, such as https://www.demochoice.org or https://demochoice.org.
Promotion
We do not sell voter data, such as telling a website selling books how you voted in a poll on favorite books. We mostly rely on others to spread the word about specific polls. If information about
you appears in a poll, it may be included in these promotional activities.
Research
Though ranked-choice voting methods have been used widely for more than 100 years, we and others continue to study improvements to those methods to take
advantage of modern developments in user interface design, information security, etc. Ballot data that do not identify voters may be released for this
purpose.
Administrative
To assist poll creators in boosting voter turnout, or in use of nonstandard counting methods, we may release ballot data and/or a list of who voted.
Ballots will be shuffled to prevent the two datasets from being correlated (assuming that more than one person has voted).
Adverse events
DemoChoice is a low-budget operation running on rented server space. It is maintained by an amateur programmer in his spare time, with occasional help
from
friends and users. Such an operation may be more prone to security breaches, server downtime, bugs, and data loss than other services you may use on the
web.
User responsibility
Users do not have permission to "stuff the ballot box" with large numbers of votes. Poll creators do not have permission from us to
cause content copyrighted by others to appear on the DemoChoice site (though it may be linked to, or posted with their permission); post or link
to content generally considered objectionable (obscene, deceptive, hateful, spam, malware, etc.); or to register voters who do not have an
existing relationship with the poll creator, or a reasonably clear interest in voting in a given poll. However, we do encourage users to promote
their polls appropriately.
Removal of content
Polls may be removed from the site at our discretion. This is likely to occur if the poll has been inactive for a significant
period of time, or if the poll contains objectionable material, but removal is not guaranteed. We and our hosting company routinely
make backups of the site. We have not established methods to rigorously and permanently destroy every record of information
gathered on the site.
Opportunities to help
DemoChoice has been created and maintained mostly by one increasingly busy volunteer. A long wish list exists for ways to improve DemoChoice,
including broader language support, user interface modernization, making the counting method more efficient, and timelier customer service. If
you are interested in helping, please let us know.
