Terms of service

1. The agreement

These terms are between 5th Star LLC ("we", "us"), 2045 W Grand Ave., Suite B, Chicago, IL 60612, and the organization named on an order for CIC HQ ("you", "the client"). They apply from the date you sign an order or first use CIC HQ, whichever comes first. The person accepting them confirms they can bind the organization. An order may set a different price, term or scope; where it does, the order wins. Our privacy page is part of this agreement.

2. The service

CIC HQ is a web app at app.cichq.app and a phone app for iPhone and Android for running petition drives, door-to-door canvassing and surveys at the door. It is made of modules (for example Petitions, Page scan, Field day, Canvassing, Comment Feed and Script help) that we switch on for your organization month by month according to your order. We may improve or change the service at any time; we will not remove a module you are paying for during a paid month without telling you first.

3. Your people

Accounts are invite only. You add people by email and give each one a role on each campaign: manager, validator, field lead, circulator or canvasser. You are responsible for what the people you add do in CIC HQ, for telling them that the phone app records their location at the moments described on our privacy page, and for any notice your state requires before an employer records an employee's location. You remove people when they stop working for you. Removing a person stops new records only; records they already made stay with the campaign.

4. Your data

Ownership. The voter file you supply, the records your people make in the field, your scripts and your results are yours. We process them only to run the service for you, as described on our privacy page, and on your instructions.

Voter files. You confirm that you obtained each voter file lawfully, that you are permitted to hold it and to have us hold it for you, and that you will use it only for the purposes your state allows. We store that confirmation with the file. You will not supply a voter file for a commercial campaign where your state bars commercial use.

No exports. Nobody, you or we, downloads a list of voters or signers from the service. You can download reports and the hours CSV, and at close-out a package by secure download. Any other export is a written request that we review, fulfil where we can, and log.

Page images. Photographs of petition pages are kept for your campaign, shown only to your validators, managers and owners, and deleted 60 days after the campaign closes unless you place it on hold.

5. Acceptable use

You will use CIC HQ only for lawful petition, campaign, research and community-engagement work, and only within the law of each state you work in. You will not: share accounts; try to read, copy or extract voter or signer data other than through the service's screens and reports; put a record into the service that you know to be false; use the service to harass or discriminate; or let anyone who is not under your organization use your account. If we believe an account is being used to break these rules or the law, we may suspend it and will tell you why.

6. Fees

Fees, billing terms and any changes to them are set out in your order. Fees exclude taxes, which you pay where they apply. If a payment is 15 days late, your organization goes read-only until it is paid, and after 30 further days its campaigns close as described in section 9.

7. What we promise

• To keep your data separate from every other client's, and to enforce who sees what in the database, not only on the screen.
• To encrypt your data in transit and at rest, to keep page images in private storage, and never to put a secret key in a phone or a browser.
• To use only service providers bound by contracts that bar any other use of your data, and to tell you before adding one.
• Never to sell, share or train on your data.
• To tell you without undue delay if we learn of a breach affecting your data.
• To answer support requests at support@cichq.app, and to keep the service available apart from planned maintenance, which we announce in advance where we can.

8. Ownership

We own CIC HQ: the software, its design, its words and the layouts we build for reading voter files, including any we build while reading yours. You own your data and results. You give us the right to use your data to provide the service to you, and to use totals that identify no person and no client to improve the service. Anything you tell us about the service we may use freely.

9. Term and close-out

This agreement runs month to month until either of us ends it with 30 days' notice; fees already paid are not refunded. A campaign with no activity for 30 days gets a warning, which a manager can clear by keeping it open; at 45 days it closes. When a campaign closes, your managers receive a close-out package by secure download, and page images are deleted 60 days later unless the campaign is on hold. When your organization's last campaign has closed and your account is closed, we delete your data within 30 days except where the law requires us to keep it. Sections 4, 8, 10, 11 and 12 survive the end of this agreement.

10. Disclaimers

CIC HQ checks each petition line against the voter file you supplied and shows what it found. That check is an aid to your validators; it is not a legal determination that a signature is valid, and the election office's count decides. Survey results are totals of the people your canvassers talked to and are unweighted unless the service says otherwise. The service reads page images and drafts script replies with the help of an artificial-intelligence model, and a person must check every line and reply before relying on it. Apart from what section 7 promises, the service is provided as it is, and we make no other warranty, including of fitness for a particular purpose or of uninterrupted operation.

11. Liability

To the extent the law allows, neither of us is liable to the other for indirect, special or consequential loss, including lost profits or a failed filing, and our total liability under this agreement in any twelve months is limited to the fees you paid us in those twelve months. These limits do not apply to a breach of section 4 or 5 by you, to a breach of section 7's promise never to sell or share your data by us, or to anything that cannot be limited by law. You will indemnify us against claims arising from a voter file you had no right to supply or a use of the service that breaks the law.

12. General

This agreement is governed by the law of the State of Illinois, and the state and federal courts in Cook County, Illinois have exclusive jurisdiction, except that either of us may seek an injunction anywhere to protect data. It is the whole agreement between us about CIC HQ and replaces earlier discussions. Neither of us may assign it without the other's consent, except to a successor to the whole business. If a part of it is unenforceable, the rest stands. Notices go by email to the addresses on the order and to team@cichq.app. We may update these terms with 30 days' notice by email; continuing to use the service after that date is acceptance.