The rules we all agree to

1 Agreement to these terms

The Article V Blueprint (“the Project,” “we,” “us”) operates this website and the participation tools on it. By visiting the site, or by submitting anything to it — a comment, an essay, a proposal, a vote, or a letter — you agree to these Terms of Use and to our Privacy Policy. If you don’t agree, please don’t use the site.

2 What this project is — and isn’t

The Article V Blueprint is a nonpartisan civic-education and advocacy project. It presents a proposed rewrite of the U.S. Constitution and a set of proposed statutes, and it invites the public to read, debate, ratify, and nominate what comes next.

• The constitution and statutes published here are a draft proposal. They are not current law, have no legal force, and do not amend or replace the Constitution of the United States or any law.
• Nothing on this site is legal, financial, or professional advice.
• Votes, tallies, scoreboards, and “ratifications” on this site are an expression of public opinion within this project. They are not official elections, and they create no legal or governmental effect.
• We aim to present arguments from across the spectrum. Hosting a comment, essay, or proposal is not an endorsement of it by the Project.

3 Who may take part

You must be at least 13 years old to submit anything to this site. The site is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. If you are under 18, you should have your parent or guardian’s permission to take part.

If you believe a child under 13 has submitted information to us, contact [email protected] and we will remove it.

4 Verification and voting

To ratify or nominate, you verify once with your email: we send a 6-digit code and store your email only as an unreadable, salted hash — never shown, never shared, and not reversible back to your address. See the Privacy Policy for details.

Participation is one person, one vote. You agree not to create multiple identities, use another person’s email, automate submissions, or otherwise manipulate votes or tallies. We use bot checks and rate limits to protect the integrity of the process, and we may discard submissions or votes that appear to break this rule.

5 Community rules & acceptable use

By submitting anything to this site you agree to these rules. They apply to everyone, equally.

• Be a real person acting in good faith. No bots, no automated submissions, no coordinated flooding or vote manipulation.
• Attack arguments, not people. No harassment, threats, intimidation, or encouragement of violence against anyone.
• No slurs or hate directed at people for their race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or national origin.
• No doxxing. Don’t post private information about anyone, including yourself in a way that could put you at risk.
• Keep it legal. No content that is illegal to post. Anything that sexualizes minors is reported to the authorities as the law requires.
• Own your words, and your rights to them. Don’t paste large copyrighted works you don’t have the right to share. Submit your own writing.
• Don’t attack the site itself. No attempts to breach security, scrape at scale, overload the service, probe for vulnerabilities, or interfere with other people’s use of it.

We may remove content, decline a submission, or block a participant who breaks these rules, at our discretion. Being declined once isn’t a judgment of you — resubmit within the rules.

6 How we moderate

Everything you submit is read by a person before it appears. Nothing a visitor writes is public until a moderator approves it. We aim to review submissions within about 48 hours.

We moderate for conduct, not viewpoint. Every legitimate comment is posted — including ones this Project disagrees with. We remove a submission only if it breaks the rules above. We are not obligated to publish any particular submission, and a decision to publish, decline, or remove something is not an endorsement or a judgment of the person who sent it.

7 Your content, and the permission you grant

You keep ownership of what you write. These terms don’t take your work from you.

When you submit something and it is approved, you grant the Project a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free permission to host, store, display, reproduce, and distribute that submission on and in connection with the site, as part of the public and ongoing record of the debate. Because that record is meant to last, this permission continues for approved submissions even if you later stop using the site; you may ask us to remove a specific submission and we will consider the request in good faith.

When you submit, you confirm that:

• the submission is your own work, or you otherwise have the right to share it;
• it doesn’t break the law or these terms, and doesn’t violate anyone else’s rights; and
• you understand it may be published and kept as part of the public record, so you shouldn’t submit anything you consider private or confidential.

8 Our content and marks

The proposed constitution and statutes are meant to be read and shared. You are welcome to read, quote, and share the text of the draft for civic, educational, and non-commercial purposes, with attribution to The Article V Blueprint.

Other materials on the site — its design, code, branding, the Article V name and seal, and the “Arty” mascot — belong to the Project and may not be copied, reused, or presented as your own without permission.

9 Copyright complaints

We respect intellectual property, and we expect the same. If you believe something on the site infringes your copyright, email [email protected] with: the page or exact text at issue, a description of the work you say it infringes, your contact information, and a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use isn’t authorized. We remove infringing material promptly and may block participants who repeatedly infringe.

10 Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect and how we handle it. In short: we keep data collection to a minimum, store verification emails only as unreadable hashes, never store the mailing addresses used for the legislator-lookup tool, and don’t sell personal information. Your use of the site is also subject to that policy.

11 Third-party links and services

The site uses service providers (for example, Cloudflare for hosting and bot protection) and links out to other places — social networks, your legislators’ contact pages, and news sources. We don’t control those third parties and aren’t responsible for their content or practices. When you follow a link off this site, their terms and privacy policies apply, not ours.

12 Disclaimers

The site and everything on it are provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We don’t promise the site will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, or that any information on it is complete or current.

Again: the draft constitution and statutes are a proposal, not law, and nothing here is legal, financial, or professional advice. Taking part creates no official, electoral, or legal effect.

13 Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent allowed by law, the Project and the people who run and volunteer for it will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, arising out of or relating to your use of the site — even if we’ve been told such damages are possible. Where liability can’t be excluded, it is limited to the greatest extent the law allows. Some places don’t allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

14 Indemnification

You agree to cover and hold harmless the Project and the people who run it from claims and costs (including reasonable legal fees) that arise from content you submit or from your breach of these terms or of the law.

15 Suspension and blocking

We may decline submissions, remove content, or block a participant’s access — temporarily or permanently, and without notice — if they break these terms or the community rules, or to protect the site and the people who use it. The permission you granted for submissions we’ve already published survives such a block, as described in section 7.

16 Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. When we make a material change, we’ll update the “Last updated” date below and, where it matters, note the change on the site. Your continued use of the site after a change means you accept the updated terms.

17 Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and any dispute will be handled in the state or federal courts located in California — except where the law that applies to you requires otherwise.

Before bringing any formal dispute, please contact us at [email protected] so we can try to resolve it directly. Most things can be settled with a conversation.

18 How to reach us

• General & support: [email protected]
• Report a problem (bad content, a threat, private info, or a copyright issue): [email protected]
• Privacy questions: [email protected]

For anything involving immediate danger to a person, contact local law enforcement first.