V.O.I.C.E.

Legal

Terms of Service

The rules of the road. Plain language first; the lawyers' version follows after review.

Draft notice: these terms are a working draft and have not yet been reviewed by an attorney. They will be finalized before public launch.

1. What V.O.I.C.E. is

V.O.I.C.E. (Voting Opinions of Independent Citizens Everywhere) is a civic information platform. It has two parts: a research library of studies we conduct or publish, and a social layer where account holders vote on issues. The only action on the social layer is voting — there are no comments, replies, reactions, follows, or messages, by design.

2. Accounts

One person, one account. Accounts are verified by email at launch; stronger verification tiers may be introduced later and will always be labeled. You must provide a working email address you control. Throwaway and disposable email addresses are not permitted. You are responsible for activity under your account.

3. Voting and records

Each account gets one vote per issue, changeable exactly once. Your vote records are private by default; you may choose to make individual records public. Public records may be shared and displayed with your handle. Votes on closed issues are frozen permanently as public tallies.

4. Issues

Any account holder may propose an issue. Proposals need a threshold of endorsements to go live, and live issues must hold a minimum vote traction to stay open. We may remove issues that are spam, unlawful, or abusive, and we may close issues at our discretion. Removed issues and their attached votes are deleted.

5. Open polls are not research

Tallies on the social layer count votes cast. They are not representative samples and are never presented as research findings. Research studies are conducted separately, with published methodology, and are labeled as such.

6. Acceptable use

You agree not to: create multiple accounts; vote on behalf of others; use bots or automation to vote, endorse, or propose; submit unlawful, harassing, or misleading issue content; or attempt to compromise the platform or other accounts. We may suspend accounts that violate these terms.

7. Deletion

You may request deletion of your account and identity records at any time. De-identified votes already counted in frozen public tallies cannot be removed, because the tally is a permanent public record — this is explained before you vote.

8. Changes

We may update these terms. Material changes will be announced on the platform with at least 14 days’ notice. Continued use after the notice period means you accept the new terms.