This forum is built to need as little of your information as possible. Voting is anonymous, there are no trackers, no ads, no analytics, and this site makes zero requests to third-party services from your browser — fonts and all assets are served from this site itself.
One important exception, stated plainly: if you opt into updates, delivering them requires third-party messaging services (WhatsApp and our email provider) that store your data on their own systems, under their own privacy policies. Details below.
You can read, vote, write statements, and create topics without any account. Your browser generates a random anonymous ID, stored only on your device, so the system can show you statements you haven't voted on yet. It is not tied to your name, email, or anything else about you.
Votes are recorded against that anonymous ID. Statements and topics you write are public — don't include personal information in them.
Individual votes are never shown publicly anywhere — not on the site, not in WhatsApp groups, not in emails. Only aggregate tallies are visible.
A petition is the one part of this site that is deliberately public and attributed. That is what a petition is: a statement with names attached. It works the opposite way from voting, so read this before you sign.
Published on the petition page: your name, and your comment if you write one. You can uncheck “show my name” when you sign — you are still counted, and the page lists you only as one of the people who asked not to be named.
Never published: your street address and your email address. The address is collected so the organizer can show the recipient that the signers actually live here; the email is used once, to send you a confirmation link, so that a name cannot be put on a petition using someone else's address. If you are already signed in to the forum with a confirmed email, there is nothing left to prove and your signature counts immediately. Signing a petition does not subscribe you to anything.
Your signature drawing. When you sign on a phone or a touchscreen, the mark you draw is saved as an image. It is never shown on the petition page, never handed to collectors, and never published in any form — only the organizer can open it, and only as part of the record they print to deliver. If you would rather not draw, the “type it instead” option records a typed name and marks it as typed. Signature images are deleted along with the rest of your signature if you ask to be removed.
Signing in person on someone else's device. If a neighbor collecting signatures hands you their phone, your name, address and signature are recorded against that collector's name — they are vouching that they watched you sign. Because you drew the signature yourself, it counts straight away and no email is required; if you give one it is used once to send you a receipt and nothing else. Your details are not visible to the collector afterwards.
The organizer gets a copy. The person who started the petition can download the signature list — names, addresses, emails and comments — because that is the document they deliver. They are a neighbor, not this site, and once they have downloaded it we cannot recall it. If you are not comfortable with a named organizer holding your address, don't sign.
Photographs of paper sheets are private by default. A filled sheet is a page of neighbors' handwriting, addresses and signatures. Only the organizer and the collector who handed it in can open the image. An organizer may publish a sheet only after blacking out the names and addresses in their browser; what goes public is that flattened, redacted copy, and the original is never served to anyone else.
Petition records are kept in their own store, separate from the anonymous voting data, and are not used for anything but the petition.
If you sign up for updates, the messages we send you travel through services we don't control, and those services will store your data:
Accounts exist for one purpose: updates and voting continuity. We store the display name you choose, your contact detail (email or WhatsApp number), which topics you follow, and a voting identity for your account.
Because of that voting identity, an account links your votes to your contact detail on our server — that's what lets you vote from your phone, the website, or an email link without being asked the same question twice. This link is never public, never shared, and never sent to the delivery services above. If you'd rather nobody can connect your votes to you at all — including us — simply vote without an account: anonymous voting is always available.
Signing up requires confirming your email or WhatsApp number (we send you a link). Unconfirmed contact details are never messaged and are deleted automatically within an hour.
To prevent spam, topic creation is rate-limited. For this we reduce your IP address to a salted, truncated cryptographic hash the moment a request arrives — the raw address is never written to disk, and the hash cannot be reversed into an address.
We set no tracking cookies. When you confirm an account we set a single functional cookie that keeps you signed in on that browser; it contains only your account reference, is inaccessible to scripts, and is never used to track you across sites. Your browser's local storage holds your anonymous voting ID, your account details (if any), and keys for topics you created — all on your device, readable only by this site, and gone if you clear your browser data.
Reply unsubscribe on WhatsApp or use the one-click link in any email — updates stop immediately, and re-subscribing only happens here on the website, so nobody can silently switch you back on. To have your contact details and account deleted entirely, or to have your name taken off a petition you signed, ask the moderators. Note that WhatsApp and Mailgun retain their own copies of past messages under their own policies; deleting your account here does not delete data they hold.
This forum is run by local volunteers. Questions or deletion requests: ask in the community WhatsApp group, or open a topic about it right here.