Election Officials Bar Staff from Prediction Markets Before Midterms — SkimNews
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- Maricopa County, Arizona adopted a resolution in July banning approximately 13,000 county employees from trading on non-public information tied to elections, weather events, and court hearings — a measure Supervisor Thomas Galvin said was driven by post-2020 election-integrity scrutiny.
- Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs signed an executive order earlier this year banning state workers from insider trading on prediction markets, predating the Maricopa County measure.
- Delaware County, Pennsylvania extended an existing oath to bar roughly 2,200 election-office employees from prediction-market contracts on elections, with Elections Director James Allen calling prediction markets 'the newest and most existential threat to undermining faith in the elections.'
- Maryland's administrator of elections sent a letter to the state prosecutor in July asking for an investigation into whether prediction-market election contracts violate a state law that already prohibits wagers on election outcomes.
- Los Angeles County saw threats and aggression against election observers after early returns in a council race diverged from prediction-market odds — traders had expected a Spencer Pratt runoff against Karen Bass, but Nithya Raman pulled ahead as mail-in ballots were counted.
- Galvin and other officials warned voters are conflating live market odds with traditional polling, noting that 'just because someone has a 98% chance of winning on a prediction market doesn't mean that they're winning in the polls 98 to 2.'
- Polymarket told CNBC that states 'do not have legal jurisdiction to regulate prediction markets,' while Kalshi highlighted the platforms' role in breaking news; neither platform directly answered whether they plan to meet with election officials, as states and the CFTC continue fighting for regulatory oversight of event contracts.
Why it matters: With more than 15,200 election workers across Maricopa and Delaware counties now barred from prediction-market trading, election officials are drawing a hard line to insulate ballot processing from insider-trading accusations — a defensive move made urgent by the LA County incident, where vote counts that diverged from market odds triggered threats against election observers.
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