Privacy Policy

Last updated: 15 August 2026

VoteSmart is an independent, non-partisan tool. It's not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced by the New Zealand Electoral Commission or any political party.

What we collect

This section is about the VoteSmart app. What our website collects is different, and much less — see When you use our website below.

Account information. Whichever way you sign in — email and password, an email magic link, a phone number, or Google or Facebook sign-in — we store your email address, phone number, display name, and photo URL as supplied by that method, plus the sign-in provider identifiers needed to recognise your account next time.

Policy responses. Your agree / disagree / unsure answer to each policy, so you can review and change them later and so we can show you your results.

Optional demographics. On your Profile, you can optionally share an age bracket and NZ region. Never required. If you share it, your answers also add to anonymous running totals for each policy — for example, the number of people in a given age bracket who agreed with it. Those totals are counts only. They hold no record of who answered what, and they are never disclosed as a record of your individual identity or responses.

We don't publish those totals anywhere today. They accumulate so that we may be able to publish anonymous aggregate statistics in future — for example, how views on a policy differ by age group. If we ever do, it will be as aggregate figures only, and we'll suppress any breakdown with too few respondents in it for the result to stay genuinely anonymous.

Push notification token, if you enable notifications — used only to send you those notifications, tied to your account so we can stop sending them if you delete your account.

Support messages. If you contact us through the in-app support form, we receive your email address, the category you selected, your subject line and your message, along with your account ID so we can look into what actually happened on your account. It reaches us as an email, and a copy is stored so we have a record of what was sent. We keep both for 24 months, then delete them.

Because a support message is a record of a conversation with us rather than part of your account, it isn't removed when you delete your account — see Account deletion below.

Donations, if you choose to make one. Your card details are entered directly into Stripe's own payment form and never reach VoteSmart's servers. Stripe receives the donation amount and your account ID as payment metadata. We keep our own record of the amount, the date and the payment reference, so we can show you what you've given and reissue a receipt if you need one.

Basic usage analytics — which screens you view and which actions you take in the app, via Firebase Analytics. Alongside that, Firebase automatically records technical details of the device you're using: model, operating system version, app version, language, and the country the request came from, together with an identifier for your installation of the app. This is linked to your signed-in account for two specific reasons: so we can investigate a bug report against what actually happened in your session, and so we can detect responses submitted in a way that would distort our aggregate statistics (see Acceptable Use in the Terms of Service). We don't use this data for any other purpose.

Verifying it's really you, if you sign in with a phone number. Sending a code by text runs a Google reCAPTCHA check first, so the service can't be used to send texts in bulk. It runs invisibly and Google receives your IP address and signals about how the page was used in order to tell a person from a script. This happens only on the phone sign-in screen.

What we don't collect

Worth stating plainly, because a tool about politics ought to be specific about this rather than leave it to be assumed.

We don't collect your location. Not your GPS position, not an approximate location. The app doesn't ask for location permission and can't read it. The optional region on your Profile is a region you pick from a list yourself, and nothing checks it against where you actually are.

We don't use advertising identifiers. VoteSmart carries no advertising and we've switched off the advertising ID that Google's analytics tools would otherwise make available to us, so there is no ad identifier for us to read or pass on.

We don't track you across other apps or websites, and we don't buy or receive information about you from data brokers, political parties, or the electoral roll.

Long-term aggregate statistics

Unlike your individual policy responses, which we clear at each election (see below), the anonymous totals your responses contribute to may be kept indefinitely and compared across election cycles — for example, to track how a particular age group's views on similar policies have shifted over time. Because this data is genuinely de-identified and can't be traced back to you, it isn't personal information under the Privacy Act 2020, and the retention limits that apply to your individual responses don't apply to it.

How we use it

• To show you which party's published policies most closely match your own views
• To let you review and change your past responses
• To build anonymous, aggregate statistics about how VoteSmart users as a whole responded to each policy
• To send notifications you've opted into
• To respond to support requests
• To process donations you choose to make
• To understand how the app is used, so we can improve it

We do not use your data for targeted political advertising, we do not build profiles of you for any purpose beyond the app's own function, and we do not sell your information to anyone — including political parties, candidates, or data brokers.

When you use our website

Our website at votesmart.co.nz is separate from the app, and you don't need an account to use it. We run no advertising, no analytics and no tracking of any kind on it — we build no picture of who visits or what they read. Our web host keeps ordinary server request logs, as every web host does, and we don't use them to identify anyone.

Three things on the site do involve information about you.

The contact form. If you get in touch through the form on the site, we receive your name, email address, the category you chose, your subject line and your message. We use them to answer you, and for nothing else. We keep these messages for 24 months, so we can pick up a conversation that comes back to us later, and then delete them.

The beta waiting list. If you apply for the beta, we store your email address and nothing else — no name, and nothing about your visit. Applications are reviewed by a person, not just processed automatically, before anyone is let in — reviewing is the only thing your address is used for at that stage. We will use it to send you up to two emails:

1. If you're approved for the beta, with instructions for joining it.
2. When the full app goes live — sent to the whole list, whether or not you were approved for the beta, since full launch is open to everyone who ever asked to hear about it.

Your address is deleted once we've sent everything we're going to send you — after the launch email if you were never approved for the beta, or after the launch email that follows your beta approval otherwise. The list exists to send those messages and has no other purpose. It isn't a newsletter, we won't send you anything else, and we will never sell it, share it, or hand it to a political party, a candidate or anyone else. If we haven't launched within 12 months of you signing up, we'll delete your address at that point instead of holding onto it indefinitely.

You can leave at any time. Every email we send you carries an unsubscribe link, and you can email support@votesmart.co.nz at any point to be taken off the list. Either way your address is deleted outright rather than marked inactive, and we'll action an emailed request within five working days.

A one-way digest of your IP address. When you submit either form, we calculate a salted, one-way digest of your IP address and store that — never the address itself. It exists only to stop one source flooding the forms with automated submissions. It can't be reversed to recover your address or used to identify you, and it is deleted automatically after 30 days.

One smaller thing worth stating plainly: the only thing the site stores in your browser is whether you chose the light or dark theme — that stays on your own device and is never sent to us.

Where your data is processed

Our database and backend functions run on Google Cloud infrastructure in Sydney, Australia (australia-southeast1) — the nearest available region to New Zealand. This means your personal information is disclosed outside New Zealand, which engages Information Privacy Principle 12 of the Privacy Act 2020.

We rely on Google Cloud's standard data processing and security terms, which we consider provide comparable safeguards to the Privacy Act 2020, as the basis for this overseas disclosure.

Who processes it on our behalf

Account deletion

When you delete your account (Profile → Delete account), we permanently delete your profile, your policy responses, your push notification token, and your sign-in identity. This happens immediately — none of it is archived or retained.

Three things are kept:

• The anonymous running totals your responses contributed to. These were never linked to your identity and cannot be traced back to you.
• A record of any donation — the amount, the date, the payment reference, and your account ID. Unlike the totals above, this one is not anonymous: your account ID stays on it, and it can be matched against Stripe's own record of the payment.
• Any support message you sent us, for 24 months from when you sent it. These are correspondence rather than account data: the email already arrived in our support mailbox, and deleting our copy of a conversation we had with you wouldn't unsend it. They hold the email address you wrote from and whatever you told us. If you'd rather we deleted yours sooner, ask us and we will.

Separately from those three: the usage analytics described above aren't picked out and deleted account by account. They age out on Google Analytics' own retention schedule instead. What's left is a record that some installation of the app opened some screens — with the account it was linked to gone, there's nothing there that points back to you.

We keep the donation record because it is a record of money we actually received, and we are required to keep records of that for seven years under New Zealand's tax rules. That obligation doesn't end when you close your account. We delete these records once the seven years are up, and we don't use them for anything other than accounting.

You can also request deletion by email; see How to delete your data. We'll complete emailed requests within 20 working days.

How long we keep your data

We treat your account and your policy responses differently, because they carry very different levels of sensitivity.

Policy responses. We clear your saved responses at the start of each new election cycle. Your answers were given against a specific set of policies for a specific election — once a new election is called, the parties' platforms may have changed, and old answers no longer reflect anything current. It also means the most sensitive data we hold, your recorded views on specific policies, never persists beyond one election cycle, regardless of how often you use the app. You'll be able to work through the newly loaded policies next time you open VoteSmart.

Your account. Your email, phone number, display name, photo, sign-in identity, and optional demographics persist for as long as you keep using VoteSmart, so you don't have to sign up again each election cycle. You can delete your account entirely at any time — see above.

Donation records. Seven years, as New Zealand's tax rules require for records of money received, regardless of whether you still have an account.

Messages you send us. 24 months, whether they came through the in-app support form or the website's contact form, and whether or not you still have an account.

Anything else from the website. Set out under When you use our website above: launch-list addresses until we've sent the two launch emails (or 12 months, whichever comes first), IP digests 30 days.

Your rights

Under the Privacy Act 2020, you can ask to access or correct the personal information we hold about you, in addition to deleting it yourself at any time. Contact us at support@votesmart.co.nz and we'll respond within 20 working days.

Political opinions

VoteSmart is built for people in Aotearoa New Zealand, about New Zealand elections, and your policy responses reveal your political views. New Zealand's Privacy Act doesn't have a formal "sensitive data" category for this the way some other countries' laws do — we treat it as sensitive regardless, as described throughout this policy.

VoteSmart isn't targeted at users outside New Zealand and we don't expect meaningful use from other jurisdictions, so we haven't built region-specific consent flows (for example, the EU's GDPR treats political opinions as requiring explicit consent before collection). If that changes, this section will be revisited.

Minimum age

VoteSmart is intended for people aged 16 and older. Many people engage with civic and electoral information before reaching voting age, and we want VoteSmart to be useful as part of that process.

Security

We apply reasonable technical measures to protect your information, including encryption in transit and access controls on our database. No system is completely secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security. If we experience a breach likely to cause you serious harm, we'll notify you and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner as required by the Privacy Act 2020.

Changes to this policy

We'll update the "Last updated" date above when this changes, and flag material changes to active users in-app.

Contact

Questions or complaints about how we handle your information: support@votesmart.co.nz. If you're not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at privacy.org.nz.