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A county in southeastern Pennsylvania has banned its poll workers from using prediction markets to bet on elections.
The board of elections in Delaware County, outside of Philadelphia, recently approved a resolution that amended the oath poll workers take ahead of the election to include the ban.
“I think they're a pernicious, horrible factor and I don’t think elections should be bet on in one shape or form,” said Delaware County elections director Jim Allen. “The last thing we need is the referee in elections being accused of having a financial stake in these so-called prediction markets.”
Prediction markets offer users the opportunity to take financial positions on outcomes in sports, world events, and even elections.
For example, Kalshi, one such prediction market, has a U.S. elections section that currently allows users to put money on who will win the California governor’s race or which party will win control of the U.S. Senate this year. Polymarket, another popular prediction market, has over 500 events related to the midterms that users can bet on, including who will win the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania’s 7th congressional district.
Under Pennsylvania law, poll workers are already prohibited from “directly or indirectly” betting on the results of an election or primary election. Delaware County is going a step further by adding prediction markets specifically to the oath.
The markets argue that their systems are not the same as betting.
For instance, Arizona’s attorney general is currently pursuing a criminal case against Kalshi for violating that state’s law on election betting, but Kalshi has argued it is a financial market rather than a gambling operation. That’s because, instead of betting against the house as one would in a casino, users are buying and selling “Yes” or “No” contracts tied to the probability of the outcome of an event.
There hasn’t been any similar legal action in Pennsylvania testing whether prediction markets violate the ban on election betting here, and the county election board’s resolution that added the prediction market ban to Delaware County’s oath wouldn’t carry the same weight as a state law.
A non-comprehensive survey of other counties in Pennsylvania found none that have similarly banned poll workers from using prediction markets beyond the existing ban on betting. The Pennsylvania Department of State did not respond to a question about whether its staff was prohibited from using prediction markets to take a stake in elections.
Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group, said she wasn’t aware of any other jurisdiction taking similar steps, although she noted that in Maryland — where gambling on elections is illegal throughout the state — the state board of elections recently put out a statement advising that use of prediction markets for wagers involving elections, at best, violates the spirit of state law and, at worst, could carry criminal penalties.
“The most fundamental worry that comes to mind for me is that prediction markets could create financial incentives to influence outcomes rather than just predict outcomes,” Morrell said.
She warned that commodifying elections in general could have detrimental effects for democracy.
“If we make votes become like a financial instrument, then it really degrades the character of those votes,” she said. “Now we're shifting the framing from who should lead to who will win, and that’s a very different question.”
State Rep. Danilo Burgos, a Democrat from Philadelphia, has said he plans to introduce legislation to regulate prediction markets, while state Sen. Lindsey Williams, a Democrat from Allegheny County, has suggested legislation to address the risk that public officials could use non-public information to profit through prediction markets. However, neither proposal has yet been actually introduced.
Allen said that, while the rules on these markets may change in the future, elections are still happening in the meantime and public trust in their integrity needs to be maintained.
“We have the Wild West out there on this front, and we need to do something to prevent it from seeping into the election process,” he said.
Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.