Privacy notice
How Midwest Salute to the Arts handles information collected by the People’s Choice voting site.
The short version
- You do not need an account to vote.
- We do not know who you are when you vote.
- We use one necessary cookie so you are not counted twice.
- There are no advertising trackers and no third-party analytics on this site.
- The mailing list is entirely optional and completely separate from voting.
The voting cookie
The first time you vote, your browser is given a random identifier and stores it in a cookie named msta_pcv. It contains no name, no email address, and nothing derived from your device. Its only purpose is to stop the same browser voting twice for the same artwork.
The cookie lasts 90 days. It is marked HttpOnly, Secure, and SameSite=Lax, so it cannot be read by scripts and is not sent to other websites. This cookie is strictly necessary for voting to work, so there is no consent banner for it — declining it would simply mean you could not vote.
The identifier itself is never stored in our database. We store only a scrambled (hashed) version of it, produced with a secret key we hold on the server. That means even someone with a copy of our database cannot work backwards to your cookie or match you across any other system.
What a vote record contains
- Which artwork was voted for, and when.
- A scrambled version of the voting cookie identifier.
- A scrambled, shortened version of the network address the vote arrived from, and a very coarse note of the browser family and platform (for example “a Chrome-type browser on Android”).
We do not keep your network address itself; it exists only for the instant the request is being handled and is then discarded. The scrambled version is used solely to spot obviously automated voting. Because everyone at the show shares the same guest Wi-Fi, it tells us almost nothing about individuals, and votes are never discarded merely for sharing a network.
These scrambled network and browser values are deleted or anonymized 90 days after voting closes. Vote totals and the event record are kept as part of the show’s history.
The mailing list
If — and only if — you choose to sign up, we store the name, email address, and ZIP code you provide, along with the exact wording you agreed to, the version of that wording, and the date and time. We keep that consent record so we can show what you agreed to and when.
Current wording:
Yes, I would like to receive news and information about future Midwest Salute to the Arts events. I understand that I can unsubscribe at any time.
Signing up is never required in order to vote, and voting never signs you up. We do not sell, rent, or share the mailing list. To be removed, contact us using the details on the event page and we will mark you unsubscribed. Unsubscribed addresses are excluded from every mailing.
What we do not do
- No advertising networks, no ad pixels, no retargeting.
- No third-party behavioral analytics.
- No fingerprinting. The browser note we keep is deliberately too coarse to identify a device.
- No cross-site tracking. Nothing on this site loads from another company’s server.
- No location data.
Security
The site is served over HTTPS. Administrative access requires a password-protected account, and administrative actions are recorded in an audit log. Technical detail is published alongside the application’s documentation for anyone who wants to review it.
Contact
For questions about this notice, or to ask that your mailing-list record be removed, contact Midwest Salute to the Arts using the details on the event page.
This notice describes how the voting application works. It is not legal advice, and Midwest Salute to the Arts should have it reviewed against its own obligations before the show opens.