The reason wasn\u2019t a new law about online markets but a very old statute<\/a> dating back to the year 1849 \u2014 just after Wisconsin became a state.<\/p>\n \u201cNo person shall be allowed to vote in any election in which the person has made or become interested, directly or indirectly, in any bet or wager depending upon the result of the election,\u201d the statute reads.<\/p>\n The bipartisan commission also said those voters could be on the hook for felony exposure, if they know about the prohibition and vote anyway. Intentionally voting while not being qualified to do so is a felony, per state law. \u201cIt\u2019s important for voters to understand the consequences if they bet on an election outcome,\u201d Wolfe said.<\/p>\n Many other states have laws on the books against gambling on elections<\/a>. Wisconsin is the first where officials are saying people are banned from voting if they do it through prediction markets.<\/p>\n And it may not be the last, since New York has a very similar provision in both its constitution<\/a> and state law<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIn New York State, voting in an election in which an individual has placed any bet or wager on the result is prohibited,\u201d Kathleen McGrath, director of public information for the New York State Board of Elections, told me.<\/p>\n The New York attorney general\u2019s office has not yet issued a formal opinion on whether Kalshi and Polymarket election bettors are barred from voting in elections they\u2019ve wagered on. But they\u2019re currently locked in a court battle to try and get Kalshi regulated<\/a> under state gambling laws.<\/p>\n All this makes for a potentially explosive situation in the upcoming midterms, given the rapid growth of the industry, which has rolled out massive advertising campaigns and sponsorship deals to attract customers this election cycle.<\/p>\n Prediction market companies have responded with fury. Benjamin Freeman of Kalshi posted on X<\/a> that this was \u201cinsane,\u201d blatantly unconstitutional,\u201d \u201cillegal,\u201d \u201cdishonest,\u201d and \u201cdystopian.\u201d In an emailed statement, Kalshi said this was \u201cincredibly dangerous to democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n Bettors may be less perturbed. \u201cThe reaction I am party to is almost amused by how idiotic it is \u2014 how unenforceable, and backwards, and emblematic of government regulators,\u201d said Alex Feeney, who founded Eventual, a prediction market podcast he co-hosts with traders.<\/p>\n But Wisconsin Elections Commission member Ann Jacobs, who flagged the issue earlier this year<\/a> and helped create the new guidance, told me in an interview that the decision was not taken lightly.<\/p>\n \u201cThis has been the law for a long time,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd if you don\u2019t like the law, go talk to your legislator.\u201d<\/p>\n So, where did this old law come from? Could it actually be enforced? And would it hold up against court challenges?<\/p>\n America\u2019s hidden history of degenerate election gambling<\/p>\n It may seem surprising that a state would have such an old law of this nature on the books.<\/p>\n But, it turns out, many early 19th century Americans were degenerate election gamblers \u2014 so many that this became a topic of national conversation and condemnation.<\/p>\n In a 2012 paper<\/a>, economic historian Paul Rhode and economist Koleman Strumpf wrote that betting on elections was \u201ccommonplace\u201d since the US\u2019s earliest years as a nation, but that it became \u201cespecially intense during the partisan conflicts of the Jacksonian era.\u201d Newspapers, which in those days were mainly partisan, championed the practice.<\/p>\n Concerns eventually rose that election betting encouraged election rigging, just as people complain today that prop bets are corrupting sports<\/a>. After the 1844 election, Rhode and Strumpf wrote, Whig Party members complained that \u201cgamblers favoring Polk had committed voting fraud using the winnings from election bets to defray their expenses.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, in 1845, the governor of New York, Silas Wright, urged his state legislature to make \u201cthe extensive and rapidly increasing practice of betting on elections\u201d illegal, due to the \u201ccorrupting tendencies which it exerts upon the election itself.\u201d And, Rhode and Strumpf continue, evangelicals \u201cpreached long and hard against election betting\u201d as part of the second Great Awakening movement.<\/p>\n The craze eventually faded, but it was peaking just around the time Wisconsin became a state in 1848. So its new state constitution specifically addressed the issue<\/a>, saying \u201claws may be passed\u201d excluding election bettors \u201cfrom the right of suffrage.\u201d Hence the 1849 law.<\/p>\n Why attention returned to this law in 2026<\/p>\n Scott Owens points to his computer screen as he describes how to hedge a position for making a prediction on the U.S. Presidential Election at his home in Madison, Wisconsin on October 13, 2024. Owens is an amateur watchmaker as well as an employee for KalshiEx Kayla Wolf for The Washington Post via Getty<\/p>\n In recent years, in the rare occasions when the law has been noticed at all, it\u2019s been treated as an amusing, antiquated curiosity<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the rise of prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket \u2014 and the corresponding surge in election betting \u2014 made it relevant again.<\/p>\n In March, after Jacobs of the Wisconsin Elections Commission heard a radio story<\/a> about Polymarket, she posted on X<\/a>: \u201cWI friends – I know it\u2019s all the rage to bet on everything, but you cannot bet on an election in Wisconsin! If you do, your ballot can be challenged & thrown out.\u201d<\/p>\n Kalshi has long taken the<\/a> position that it doesn\u2019t allow election \u201cgambling,\u201d but rather \u201cfinancial products\u201d called \u201cevent contracts.\u201d But the commission\u2019s legal staff studied the issue, and concluded<\/a> earlier this month that it was \u201crelatively clear\u201d that a Wisconsinite \u201ccannot, even indirectly\u201d make a bet or wager on an election and then vote in that election.<\/p>\n The press release warning voters \u2014 and the backlash from Kalshi and Polymarket \u2014 soon followed.<\/p>\n How the law might (but probably wouldn\u2019t) be enforced<\/p>\n So, what would happen, then, if an avid \u201cevent contract\u201d trader decided to vote anyway?<\/p>\n Realistically, the answer is: probably nothing.<\/p>\n But if someone else had knowledge that this person was making election bets and voting, they could show up to try to get them disqualified.<\/p>\n \u201cYou would have to be there at the moment they showed up to vote \u2014 or when their absentee ballot is pulled out to be counted \u2014 and you\u2019d say, \u2018I\u2019m challenging that voter,\u2018\u201d Jeff Mandell, a Wisconsin election lawyer, told me. \u201cBut the chances that somebody is around with the right knowledge to block someone on one of these bases strikes me as pretty slender.\u201d<\/p>\n The other theoretical risk is felony prosecution. Law enforcement officials could obtain information that people voted on elections they\u2019d wagered on and, then, criminally charge them for voting illegally.<\/p>\n But Mandell pointed out that \u201cthat seems like a lot of work\u201d for a prosecutor, adding, \u201cI think that fears about enforcement, either civil or criminal, are probably overstated.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Jacobs argued, it\u2019s possible. \u201cThis is the law,\u201d Jacobs said. \u201cIt is a situation where, if people have placed a bet, they should consult with their own attorney and decide what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Would the law stand up to court challenge?<\/p>\n Since Wisconsin\u2019s original state constitution specifically said the state could restrict election bettors from voting, the law would seem to be on firm ground.<\/p>\n There\u2019s just one catch: That section of the constitution was repealed<\/a> forty years ago.<\/p>\n That repeal was made as part of a broader overhaul of the document and doesn\u2019t appear to have been specifically targeted at the election betting issue. But it does mean that the statute doesn\u2019t necessarily have the firm state constitutional footing it once did.<\/p>\n \u201cThe current constitutional language only authorizes the legislature to disenfranchise voters on two grounds \u2014 a felony conviction or incompetency \u2014 which does suggest that disenfranchisement on other grounds is impermissible,\u201d Robert Yablon, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor, said in an email.<\/p>\n The law could also be challenged in federal court. As written, the law appears to prohibit even someone making a $1 bet with their friend on an election outcome from voting. Challengers could argue that law isn\u2019t narrowly tailored enough to justify depriving qualified citizens of their voting rights.<\/p>\n For now, though, the law is on the books, and it says what it says.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a policy, it makes sense,\u201d Jacobs told Vox. \u201cYou want people to make their voting decisions based on who they think is best for the job \u2014 not who\u2019s going to make them the most money.\u201d<\/p>\n Though the Wisconsin situation has made national headlines this week, it has largely escaped notice that New York has very similar provisions in both its constitution and in state law.<\/p>\n New York\u2019s constitution says<\/a> that no person who \u201cshall make or become directly or indirectly interested in any bet or wager depending upon the result of any election, shall vote at such election.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, state law says that if a voter\u2019s eligibility is challenged on these grounds, they must swear what is known as the \u201cBribery Oath<\/a>,\u201d swearing that they haven\u2019t been paid to vote a certain way \u2014 and that they \u201chave not made, or become directly or indirectly interested in any bet or wager depending upon the result of this election.\u201d<\/p>\n When I inquired with New York state officials about whether these provisions about bets and wagers applied to Kalshi and Polymarket election event contracts, they declined to comment specifically on that.<\/p>\n But the New York attorney general\u2019s office has repeatedly taken the position, both in their public rhetoric<\/a> and in court<\/a>, that prediction markets are \u201cgambling platforms\u201d that should be regulated by state gambling law. (Earlier this month, a judge gave the state a favorable ruling<\/a> in a suit brought by Kalshi over this, though Kalshi is appealing<\/a>.)<\/p>\n If New York reaches a similar interpretation as Wisconsin, Kalshi or Polymarket bettors on elections would not be legally permitted to vote in those elections. Of course, doing that comes with a risk of voter disenfranchisement, especially if this guidance isn\u2019t well-publicized or is only belatedly clarified.<\/p>\n So, in both states, these very old laws have collided with a modern trend \u2014 and the result is a big mess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Could you accidentally gamble away your right to vote? If you live in Wisconsin, and you bought contracts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7151,9,11,10,87],"class_list":["post-305464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-democracy","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Scott](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2178485023.jpg\"\/)
<\/a><\/p>\n