Legal

Legal and Privacy

What we collect, what we promise, and what we are not.

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Plain-language draft · Updated November 3, 2026

This page is written in plain words. It is a draft that no lawyer has reviewed yet. It is not legal advice, and it does not replace the law. If anything here conflicts with the law, the law wins.

Who runs this

The Way is a website published by its founder as a personal project. It is not a company, a political party, a campaign, a political committee or a tax-exempt charity. The name “Michi Institute” appears on the site, but it is not a registered legal entity yet. If that changes, this page will say so.

You can read about the founder on the About the founder page.

Elections and campaigns

  • We do not endorse. We do not tell you who or what to vote for, and we do not rate candidates by party.
  • We have no party. We are not affiliated with any party, candidate or campaign.
  • Not paid for by any campaign. No candidate, campaign, party or political committee pays for, writes or approves our pages. Nothing here is an advertisement for or against anyone.
  • Voter guides are for information. We draw on official sources and link to them. Ballots, dates, polling places and deadlines can change. Check with your state or county election office before you rely on anything here.
  • Your picks are yours. Choices you mark on a ballot tool stay on your own device unless you turn on a sharing option. See Privacy below.

Money and donations

The Way takes no donations, so no money influences what we show you. Nothing on this site is a request for money, and nothing here is tax advice or a tax receipt. Be careful of anyone who asks for money in our name, and tell us about it.

Privacy

If you just read the site

  • You do not need an account to read.
  • We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits, such as which pages are read and roughly where visitors come from. It is built to measure traffic without following you around the web.
  • We do not run advertising trackers, a Meta (Facebook) Pixel, or ad networks. Our own code sets no tracking cookies. Cloudflare may set a short-lived technical cookie to protect the site from bots.
  • Our web host and Cloudflare keep ordinary server logs, such as IP addresses and page requests, for security and reliability.

If you are a member

  • You sign in with an email address through Supabase, the service that stores member accounts. We do not store passwords in our own code.
  • Your email stays with the sign-in service. Other members see your display name, not your email.
  • Things you post, such as comments, reviews, reports and uploaded pictures, are tied to your member account. Some are public and some are seen only by reviewers and admins. The page where you post tells you which.
  • Some forms use Cloudflare Turnstile to stop spam. It may read basic browser signals to tell people from bots.

Ballot tools

  • Your ballot picks are saved in your own browser. They are not sent to us.
  • If you choose to share them, you must tick a box that is off by default. You can stop sharing later.
  • We do not save your street address.

Records we keep on purpose

Parts of the site keep a permanent public history so nothing is quietly rewritten, such as corrections, moderation actions and published research. Posts that become part of that record may stay on it even if you leave. If you want something personal removed, ask us. We will remove what we lawfully can and tell you what we cannot.

What we do not do

We do not sell your information. We do not use it to target ads. We share it only with the services that run the site (hosting, sign-in and security), or when the law requires it.

Your choices

You can clear your browser storage to erase your saved ballot picks. You can ask us to see, fix or delete your member information. Depending on where you live, state law may give you more rights, and we will honor them.

Kids, teachers and parents

Reading the site needs no account and collects nothing from you beyond the traffic counts above. Member accounts are for people 13 and older. Sign-up asks whether you are 13 or older, and we do not keep your age or birth date. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Teens should ask a parent or guardian before they join, and parents are welcome to write to us. If you think a child gave us information, email us and we will delete it. Parents and teachers are welcome to use the pages with children. A child should not make an account or post. Our teacher and parent page explains what we hope to build for kids.

Terms of use

By using the site you agree to these rules. If you do not agree, please do not use it.

  • Use it for information. The site is provided as is. We work to be accurate and fix mistakes, but we make no promise that anything is complete, current or fit for a particular use. It is not legal, tax, medical or voting-law advice.
  • Be a good neighbor in comments and The Commons. Stay on topic. Say “alleged” for anything unproven. Do not post private information about anyone, threats, harassment, hate, spam, or anything illegal. Do not post anything you do not have the right to share.
  • No campaign work here. Do not use the site to run a campaign, collect money for one, or pose as a candidate or as us.
  • Moderation. Reviewers and admins can hold, hide or remove content and suspend accounts. Hidden content is logged. We may report illegal material to the authorities.
  • Your content. You keep the rights to what you write. By posting you give us permission to show it on the site, in the form and place you chose.
  • Do not break or scrape the site. Do not attack it, overload it, or try to get into places you were not invited.
  • Limits. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for losses from using the site or relying on it. Some places do not allow these limits, so they may not apply to you.
  • Links. We link to other sites. We do not control them and are not responsible for what they say or collect.

AI-written content

We use AI tools to help find sources, draft plain-language text, build the site and make some illustrations. AI can be wrong. Pages written or drafted with AI carry an “Unchecked” label until a person compares them with the sources. Illustrations made with AI are labeled. News items that we post on social networks or chat servers will carry an AI label too. Read more on How we use AI.

  • Our original text and graphics belong to their authors. You may link to them, and you may quote short parts with credit.
  • Laws, court rulings, government records and other public documents are quoted so you can check our work.
  • For news and other writing, we show a short excerpt, name the publisher and link to the original so you can read the whole thing. We are not trying to replace the original, and we do not copy whole articles.
  • If you own something shown here and want it changed or removed, tell us which page and what you own. We will look at it promptly.
  • Art from members and artists stays theirs, and we show it with their permission.

Accessibility

We want every person to be able to use this site. We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Level AA. We use plain language, headings, link text that makes sense, and a pause control for page motion. We have not had an outside accessibility test yet, so some pages may fall short. If something blocks you, tell us the page and the problem. We will fix it or give you the information another way.

Corrections and changes

If we get a fact wrong, we correct it in public and keep the old version visible with the date and the reason. We may change this page. The date at the top shows the last update. To reach us about privacy, a correction, a copyright concern or accessibility, write to shihan@michiinstitute.com.