The short version
Voting doesn't require an account and isn't tied to your identity. Your ZIP code, if you enter one, never leaves your browser. Commenting is the only feature that asks for anything personal (an email address), and even then, only your chosen display name is ever shown to other visitors.
Voting
Casting a vote doesn't require a name, email, or account. The first time you vote, your browser generates a random identifier and stores it on your own device (in "local storage") — this is what prevents the same browser from voting twice on the same bill. It isn't linked to your name or any other identifying information.
When a vote is recorded, the server also stores a one-way cryptographic hash of the IP address it came from, alongside the vote. This can't be reversed back into your actual IP address — it exists only so that, if the tally is ever obviously abused (the same handful of IPs voting hundreds of times, say), that pattern is visible after the fact. It isn't used to identify individual voters and isn't shown anywhere on the site.
Contact your Senators (ZIP code)
The ZIP code you enter to find your Senators is matched against a fixed, built-in table, entirely in your browser — it is never sent to this site's server or database in any form. It's saved in your browser's local storage purely so you're not asked again on your next visit, and you can clear it at any time with the "Change it" link in that panel. Clicking through to a Senator's official website takes you to a government site outside Roll Call's control, with its own separate privacy practices.
Comments (optional)
Leaving a comment is the one feature that asks for something personal: signing in requires an email address, used only to send you a one-time sign-in link (no password is ever created or stored). The first time you sign in, you'll be asked to pick a display name — that name, not your email address, is what appears next to your comments. Your email is never shown to other visitors and isn't used for anything besides signing you in.
Comments themselves are public — anyone visiting the site can read them. You can delete your own comments at any time; the site's database rules enforce that you can only delete comments you actually posted.
What this site doesn't do
- No advertising, and no ad trackers.
- No analytics or tracking pixels of any kind.
- No selling, renting, or sharing personal data with third parties for marketing.
- No cross-site tracking cookies.
Who else touches this data
Running any website on the public internet involves a small number of infrastructure providers who handle data as part of making the site work — not for their own purposes. For Roll Call, that's:
- Cloudflare — hosts the site and handles standard web traffic (including the usual server-level access logs and security/DDoS protection every host keeps).
- Supabase — the database that stores bills, vote tallies, comments, and — only for visitors who sign in to comment — email addresses and display names.
- Congress.gov — the U.S. government's own API, queried by the site's backend to fetch bill data. No visitor data is ever sent to it.
- Google Fonts — this page's typefaces are loaded directly from Google's font servers, which means your browser makes a request to Google to fetch them, similar to loading an image from a website. Google can see that request came from your IP address, the same as any server you connect to. No Roll Call data is shared with Google beyond that.
Cookies and local storage
Roll Call doesn't set tracking cookies. It does use your browser's local storage — a per-site storage feature separate from cookies — to remember a few things on your own device: your anonymous voter identifier, which bills you've already voted on, your ZIP code (if entered), and your sign-in session (if you've signed in to comment). None of this is readable by other websites, and clearing your browser's site data removes all of it.
Changes to this page
If what the site collects ever changes as features are added, this page will be updated to match. Check back here if you're ever unsure.
Questions
For questions about this policy or to request that your comment data be removed, contact [add a contact email here].
This page describes Roll Call's actual technical behavior as accurately as possible, but it's written by the site's builder, not a lawyer — treat it as a plain-language description, not a substitute for legal advice.