VoteGopher Editorial Policy

Our Non-Partisan Content

All VoteGopher writers have taken a non-partisan oath. We have worked hard over the past few months to compile unbiased and accessible information about all of the campaigns and candidates. The summaries provided on our site are based on information from the candidates' official websites, campaign speeches, and press releases as well as newspaper articles and congressional voting records.  For visual clarity, we have chosen not to display the source of each of our facts, though we have retained a footnoted version of each summary.

Your Contributions

VoteGopher is pleased to provide its users the opportunity to post quotes, news articles, videos, blog links, discussion board items, issue summary contributions, and a variety of other avenues for interaction with the site and other VoteGopher users in addition to that content already submitted by our staff of writers. However, in order to maintain the high level of quality and nonpartisanship expected of VoteGopher by its users, VoteGopher reserves the exclusive right to edit or deny any and all user submissions to any part of our site.  We will hold user content submissions to the same high standards we apply to content submissions by VoteGopher writers.

In particular, VoteGopher editors have been instructed to deny or edit, without exception, user-submitted material that:

•  is unlawful, harmful, threatening, embarrassing, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, deceptive, fraudulent, contains explicit or graphic descriptions or accounts of sexual acts, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or in violation of the VoteGopher user agreement in any way;
•  victimizes, harasses, degrades, or intimidates an individual or group of individuals on the basis of religion, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age, or disability;
•  qualifies as unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, "junk mail," "Spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation;
•  contains software viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots, or any other computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy, or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications equipment or any other similarly destructive activity, or surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information;
•  negatively affects other users' ability to engage in the Web Site or Services;
•  intentionally or unintentionally violates any applicable local, state, national or international law; or
•  the user does not have a right to transmit under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships (such as inside information, proprietary and confidential information learned or disclosed as part of employment relationships or under nondisclosure agreements).

We will also retains the right to edit or deny all user submissions in order to ensure relevance of multimedia to the page on which it is posted, to eliminate multiple occurrences of the same link, and/or to correct expired or damaged links.  

True to our commitment of non-partisanship, VoteGopher editors are not authorized to edit or deny user submissions based on:

•  Political viewpoint or opinion expressed therein or of the posting user;
•  Requests from national, state, or local campaign or party-affiliated groups on the basis of political beliefs or support for a specific candidate or candidates;
•  Personal political beliefs or personal support of a candidate or candidates; or
•  Personal desire to obfuscate, alter, de-emphasize, or otherwise change credible content submissions.

All VoteGopher editors take an oath of nonpartisanship as a condition of their participation with the site.   It is because of our commitment to nonpartisan and accurate information that we have established the above policy.  We hope you enjoy our site - and use it well!

Note: The above policy is meant to help our users by synthesizing parts of our User Agreement and summarizing voluntary practices that we have instituted at VoteGopher.  It in no way replaces the superceding User Agreement.