READING, Pa. \u2013 You\u2019ve probably heard more lately about apps where people can bet on pretty much everything. From sports, to the economy, and even elections.<\/p>\n
Nationally, sites like Polymarket and Kalshi have grown in popularity, letting users put money on political races and other future events.<\/p>\n
Now Berks County says it wants none of that near ballot workers. So Thursday, the Berks County Board of Elections voted to update the oath taken by county workers who help open mail-in and absentee ballots on Election Day.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are just adding to that line, \u2018I am not directly or indirectly interested in any bet, wager or prediction market related to the result of the election,\u2019\u201d said Stephanie Nojiri, assistant director of county election services.<\/p>\n
County officials say betting on elections was already banned. But with these sites getting more attention, they wanted to make it crystal clear.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just want to make sure that anyone who is involved with opening any ballots is not in any way having any kind of investment or bet on how an election will go,\u201d Nojiri said.<\/p>\n
Officials say this step only applies to county workers opening ballots. Other election workers are already prohibited from betting on elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is just the oath that’s given to our county workers who are here opening ballots. We did not make any changes to the poll worker oath because that oath is determined by statute,\u201d Nojiri said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 You\u2019ve probably heard more lately about apps where people can bet on pretty much everything.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[10077,349,11848,1963,80717,60837,70960,80718,60838,60841,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-180880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-absentee-ballot","tag-berks-county","tag-betting","tag-board-of-elections","tag-election-worker","tag-kalshi","tag-mail-in-ballot","tag-oath","tag-polymarket","tag-prediction-market","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}