Our compliance posture
Ballot Yard is a small, bootstrapped technology company. We operate as a neutral domain leasing and geo-routing infrastructure vendor. We do not hold legal certifications, have not engaged third-party compliance auditors, and have not conducted external security assessments. We are transparent about that.
We do not provide compliance guidance, legal clearance, or regulatory certification of any kind. All legal compliance obligations — including FEC disclosure requirements, FARA filings, state campaign finance law, and content liability — rest entirely and exclusively with the lessee. Ballot Yard accepts no liability for lessee compliance with any applicable law.
What Ballot Yard is
We are a domain leasing marketplace. We own a portfolio of domains and lease access to them on a geographic, time-limited basis. We provide geo-routing infrastructure that routes visitor traffic based on IP geolocation. That is the entirety of our service.
We are not a political consultant, law firm, compliance vendor, or regulated entity. We do not advise on campaign strategy, message legality, or regulatory compliance.
FEC — lessee responsibility
If you are a political committee subject to Federal Election Commission jurisdiction, your payments to Ballot Yard are vendor expenditures you must disclose in your normal FEC reporting. We are a commercial vendor. How you categorize and report that expenditure, and what other FEC obligations apply to your use of our infrastructure, is your responsibility and that of your legal counsel.
We do not provide FEC vendor documentation packages, pre-approved vendor filings, or compliance certifications. We can provide a W-9 and basic invoicing records if you need them for your own recordkeeping.
Your content, served through our infrastructure, must comply with all FEC disclaimer requirements (52 U.S.C. § 30120 and applicable regulations). We will do a basic check for the presence of a disclaimer before activating your content. We are not checking for legal sufficiency — that is your responsibility.
FARA — lessee responsibility
If you or your organization may be a foreign principal or agent of a foreign principal under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (22 U.S.C. § 611 et seq.), you are responsible for determining whether FARA obligations apply and for making any required filings with the Department of Justice. Ballot Yard does not knowingly facilitate activity that requires FARA registration, but we do not conduct FARA screening of applicants. Compliance is your responsibility.
State and local campaign finance law
Campaign finance law varies significantly by state and locality. Ballot Yard does not monitor, advise on, or guarantee compliance with any state or local campaign finance requirement. If you are running a state or local campaign, you are responsible for complying with all applicable state law, including any vendor disclosure or expenditure reporting obligations specific to your jurisdiction.
Content liability
You are solely and exclusively responsible for all content you upload and serve through Ballot Yard infrastructure. This includes but is not limited to: accuracy of statements, defamation risk, copyright compliance, right of publicity, trademark, and compliance with all applicable advertising and campaign communication law.
Ballot Yard provides a basic pre-activation review that checks for obvious AUP violations and required disclaimer presence. This review does not constitute legal clearance, editorial review, factual verification, or any warranty that your content is lawful. We can miss things. We are a small team. Do not rely on our review as a substitute for your own legal review.
Content moderation and acceptable use
The Ballot Yard Acceptable Use Policy sets minimum content standards. We will not activate content that appears to constitute: illegal vote suppression, materially false statements about voting procedures or election administration, impersonation of election officials or government agencies, or content that clearly violates applicable law on its face. We will also not activate content missing required legal disclaimers.
We apply these standards on a good-faith, best-effort basis. We are not legal experts. We are not accountable for content that passes our review and turns out to be legally problematic. That liability is yours.
Takedown requests
If you believe content served through Ballot Yard infrastructure is unlawful, harmful, or violates our AUP, email hello@ballotyard.com. We will review and respond as promptly as our capacity allows. We are a small team and cannot guarantee response times, but we take AUP violations seriously and will act on clear violations.
Valid legal process (court orders, law enforcement requests) will be complied with as required by law. We are not able to provide 24-hour legal process response guarantees at our current scale.
Data and privacy
Ballot Yard does not collect personal data of visitors to lessee content beyond standard server log data (IP address, timestamp, user agent) retained for routing and operational purposes. If you collect visitor data through content you serve on our infrastructure, you are acting as an independent data controller and all data privacy obligations (GDPR, CCPA, or otherwise) are your responsibility.
Security
We take reasonable precautions to secure our infrastructure. We have not undergone formal security certification (SOC 2, ISO 27001, or similar). We have not retained external penetration testing firms. As a bootstrapped startup, those programs are outside our current operating budget. We are honest about that. If your procurement requirements include third-party security certifications, we cannot meet them at this stage.
Questions
All inquiries: hello@ballotyard.com