What we collect, and what we don't.

Privacy Policy

Who we are

After Vote is a free civic engagement tool operated by Charm City Impact Lab (CCIL), a nonpartisan organization based in Baltimore, Maryland. We send a weekly email digest of upcoming public hearings at seven bodies: Baltimore City's Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals (BMZA), Liquor Board, Planning Commission, Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP), and Board of Estimates, plus Maryland's Board of Public Works and Public Service Commission. This policy explains what we collect, why we collect it, and what your choices are. It applies to After Vote at charmcityimpactlab.org.

What we collect

The only personal information we keep is your email address, which you give us when you sign up. If you use the testimony tool or My Block, we use what you type to give you an answer and then discard it. If you get a toolkit, Gumroad shares some order details with us (details below). We do not collect your name, location, or demographic information. After Vote does not use cookies, tracking pixels, or behavioral analytics. We do not track what you do on our site or anywhere else.

Why we collect it

To send you the weekly digest. That is the only purpose.

Where your email lives

Your address is stored with Resend, the third-party service we use to deliver email. That contact record is the only place your address exists in our systems. The After Vote website runs on Netlify using serverless functions. It stores the public hearing information that goes into each digest, but it keeps no database of subscribers or visitors. We retain your address for as long as you are subscribed.

If you use the testimony tool

The testimony tool drafts a starting point for public comment on a hearing in the digest. When you ask for a draft, our server sends your choices (your position and your connection to the case), anything you write in the optional box, and the public details of the case to Anthropic, the company that makes the Claude AI model, which writes the draft. We do not save your choices, what you wrote, or the draft. The draft appears on your screen and is gone from our side when you leave the page. Please don't put sensitive personal information in the optional box.

The draft is a starting point, not legal advice, and it can contain mistakes. You are the author: review it, change it, and make it yours. You also submit it yourself. After Vote never files testimony with any board on your behalf.

If you use My Block

My Block shows what is happening near a Baltimore City address you type in. To run that lookup, our server sends the address to the U.S. Census Bureau's public geocoding service, which returns its location on a map, along with its state legislative and congressional districts. We then send that map location, or a small map area around it, not your address, to the City of Baltimore's Open Baltimore data service to pull nearby 311 requests, housing code notices and liquor licenses, and to look up the location's zoning, historic district, neighborhood and City Council district. We compare the location with the hearings in our digest, then discard both the address and the location. We do not save, cache, or log them, and they are never connected to your email address. The address travels inside the request rather than in the page link, so it does not appear in web logs or your browser history, and because the lookup comes from our server, the Census Bureau does not see your IP address.

Nearby 311 requests and housing code notices are shown by block, such as "1400 block of W Baltimore St," never by house number. Hearings and licensed businesses show their published addresses, the same way the digest does. The 311 and liquor license records are public data the City of Baltimore publishes on Open Baltimore. To keep lookups fast, we store map locations for the hearing addresses in our digest; that store holds no information about visitors.

If you get a toolkit

Our printable toolkits are free, with the option to pay what you want, and are delivered through Gumroad, an online store platform. When you click Get it, you leave our site and check out on Gumroad, even for a free copy. If you choose to pay, Gumroad and its payment processors collect your payment details and the information needed to complete the sale. We never see or store your card number.

Like any Gumroad seller, we can see the details Gumroad shares with sellers about each order, free or paid, such as your email address, what you got, what you paid, and when. We use them only to deliver your toolkit, answer your questions, and handle refunds. Getting a toolkit does not sign you up for the weekly digest, and we do not add your purchase email to our mailing list. Gumroad handles your information under its own privacy policy.

Services we rely on

After Vote runs on a few outside services rather than servers of our own. Each one handles a specific job and gets only what that job requires.

Resend stores your email address and delivers the digest. Netlify hosts the website and runs the functions behind it; like any web host, it processes standard request data such as IP addresses to serve the site securely, and we do not use that data to track you. Anthropic writes testimony drafts, and only receives anything when you use that tool. The U.S. Census Bureau's public geocoding service turns a My Block address into a map location, and the City of Baltimore's Open Baltimore service returns public records for the surrounding area; both requests come from our server, not your browser. Gumroad runs checkout and delivery for toolkits, and only receives anything when you get one. Zoho hosts the info@charmcityimpactlab.org inbox, so it holds any email you send us. If we add a service that handles your information, we will list it here and update the effective date.

What we will never do

We do not sell, rent, or trade your email address. We do not share it with anyone except Resend, and only so Resend can deliver the digest. The same goes for toolkit order details: we do not sell or share them. We do not use it to profile you, score you, or make automated decisions about you, and we do not use AI for any of those purposes either. After Vote has no affiliation with any political party, candidate, or campaign, and your address will never be given to one.

Your choices and rights

Unsubscribe: every email includes an unsubscribe link. Click it and the emails stop immediately.

Access or correct: write to us and we will tell you what we have on file (your email address) or fix it if it is wrong.

Delete: write to us and we will permanently delete your contact record from Resend within 10 business days, then confirm it is done. Details are in the Unsubscribe and Data Deletion Policy below.

Toolkit orders: Gumroad keeps order records under its own policy, including for tax and legal reasons. We keep no copies of our own. To delete your Gumroad account or order history, contact Gumroad. We are glad to tell you what we can see about your order.

We respond to privacy questions within 5 business days, and we never confirm to anyone other than you whether a given address is subscribed.

Security

Our main safeguard is collecting almost nothing. Beyond that, access to our Resend and Gumroad accounts is limited to a small number of CCIL staff and protected with two-factor authentication. No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If your data is ever exposed, we will tell you plainly what happened.

Children

After Vote is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information. If a child has subscribed, contact us and we will delete the record.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will post the new version here with a new effective date. If a change is significant, we will also say so in the digest.

Governing law

After Vote operates under Maryland law, including the Maryland Consumer Protection Act and the Maryland Personal Information Protection Act.

Responsible Disclosure

If you find a security vulnerability in After Vote, we want to hear about it.

What to include

A description of the issue, the URL or endpoint affected, steps to reproduce it, what you believe an attacker could do with it, and a way to reach you with follow-up questions.

What we will do

We will acknowledge your report within 72 hours, investigate it, keep you informed while we work on a fix, and let you know when it is resolved. If you want public credit, we will give it. If you prefer anonymity, we will honor that.

Our commitment

Charm City Impact Lab will not pursue legal action against anyone who reports a vulnerability in good faith. Good faith means you do not access, alter, or delete subscriber data beyond what is needed to demonstrate the issue, you do not disrupt the service, and you give us reasonable time to fix the problem before disclosing it publicly. Do that, and you have nothing to fear from us.

Unsubscribe & Data Deletion

Unsubscribing

Click the unsubscribe link in any After Vote email. It takes effect immediately and you will receive no further digests. Your contact record in Resend is marked unsubscribed and kept as a suppression record, which is what prevents you from ever being emailed again by accident. No reason or explanation needed.

Full deletion

If you want your address removed from our records entirely, email us from the address you want deleted, with a subject line like "Delete my data." Within 10 business days we will permanently delete your contact record from Resend, which is the only system where your address is stored, and send you a confirmation. That confirmation will be the last email you receive from us.

We act only on deletion requests sent from the address itself, so no one else can delete your subscription for you.