Cookie policy
Midterms26 uses a small number of first-party cookies and browser storage. Only the strictly necessary ones are used without your consent. Everything else is off until you allow it, and you can change your choice at any time.
Strictly necessary — always on
| Name | Purpose | Lasts |
|---|---|---|
| mt_session | Keeps you signed in. HttpOnly, so page scripts cannot read it. | up to 12 hours |
| mt_csrf | Protects your account against cross-site requests. | same as sign-in |
| mt_consent | Remembers your cookie choices and a random consent ID. | 6 months |
| Session storage | Per-tab state: the chat conversation, a "remind me later" for two-factor setup, hand-over between pages. | until the tab closes |
Personalization
Remembers your colour theme, the office you viewed last (Senate, Governor, House…), the Track tab you chose and whether you have seen the chat button. Without consent these choices last only until you close the tab.
| Name | Purpose | Lasts |
|---|---|---|
| mt_prefs | Theme, last office, Track tab, chat button seen. | 1 year |
Performance & caching — less work for our server
Keeps a copy of the public election data (maps, races, candidate rosters, early vote) in your browser. Each visit asks our server one tiny question, "has the data changed?", and reuses the copy until it has. Pages open faster and the server sends far less. No personal data is stored.
| Name | Purpose | Lasts |
|---|---|---|
| mt_dv | The version of the election data your browser has cached. | 30 days |
| Cache "mt-data-v1" | The cached public data files (browser cache storage, not a cookie). | until the data changes |
Analytics & page speed
Counts visits and pages, which offices and states are viewed, the referring website (its name only), the device class (phone / tablet / desktop) and page speed (time to first byte, first and largest paint, load time, layout shift, cache hits). We do not record your IP address or anything you type. Your visits are never linked to your account. The random visitor number is stored on our server only as a one-way keyed hash. Data is kept 13 months. Turning analytics off deletes this browser's recorded visits from our server.
| Name | Purpose | Lasts |
|---|---|---|
| mt_aid | A random visitor number, so repeat visits count once. | 13 months |
If your browser sends Global Privacy Control, analytics starts off and the banner says so.
What we never do
- No advertising, retargeting or cross-site tracking cookies, and no third-party analytics.
- We never sell or share analytics data.
- Fonts (Google Fonts) and the map libraries (cdnjs) are loaded from their servers, which see your IP address like any website you visit. They set no cookies for this site.
Your consent record
Each time you choose, we store the choice, the policy version, the time and the random consent ID shown in Cookie settings (plus your account number if you are signed in), so we can show what you agreed to. No IP address is stored.