Can you accidentally gamble away your right to vote?
If you live in Wisconsin, and you bought a contract on a prediction market like Kalshi’s about who would win an election there, you’ve done it, according to state election officials. And they think that if you vote anyway, you can be prosecuted.
“We want voters to understand that they cannot legally bet on an election and vote in the same election,” Meagan Wolfe, superintendent of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said. he said in a statement on Tuesdaybefore the state’s August 11 primary election.
The reason was not the new law about online marketing but very old law beginning in 1849 – just after Wisconsin became a state.
“No person shall be allowed to vote in any election in which such person has made or is interested, directly or indirectly, in any wager or wager depending on the outcome of the election,” the law reads.
The bipartisan commission also said those voters could be on the hook for criminal exposure, if they knew about the ban and voted anyway. Deliberately voting while not qualified to do so is a crime, according to the law of the land. “It is important for voters to understand the outcome if they are going to bet on the outcome of the election,” Wolfe said.
Many other states have laws on the books against betting on elections. Wisconsin is the first state where officials say people are banned from voting if they do so through prediction markets.
And it may not be the last, as New York has the same provision in both the constitution and the law of the land.
“In New York State, voting in an election where a person has placed a bet or any wager on the outcome is prohibited,” Kathleen McGrath, director of public information for the New York State Board of Elections, told me.
The New York attorney general’s office has not yet officially commented on whether bettors in the Kalshi and Polymarket elections are barred from voting in the elections they have placed bets on. But they are currently locked in a court battle try and get control of Kalshi under state gambling laws.
All of this is shaping up to be an explosion in the upcoming midterms, given the rapid growth of the industry, which has launched massive advertising campaigns and sponsorship deals to attract customers this election cycle.
Prediction market firms have responded angrily. Benjamin Freeman of Kalshi published on X that this was “insane,” clearly illegal, “against the law,” “fraud,” and “deception.” In an emailed statement, Kalshi said this is “very dangerous for democracy.”
Stakeholders can be a little upset. “The reaction I’m getting is almost exhilaration at how stupid it is — how unworkable, and backwards, and a sign of government regulators,” said Alex Keeney, who founded Eventual, a market prediction podcast he hosts with traders.
But Wisconsin Election Commission member Ann Jacobs, who reported the issue earlier this year and help create new guidelines, he told me in an interview that the decision was not taken lightly.
“This has been the law for a long time,” he said. “And if you don’t like the law, go talk to your MP.”
So, where did this ancient law come from? Can it really be implemented? And would it stand up to court challenges?
America’s hidden history of election gambling gone bad
It may seem strange that a government could have such an old law on the books.
But, it turns out, many Americans of the early 19th century were election gamblers – so many that this became a topic of national conversation and condemnation.
In a 2012 papereconomic historian Paul Rhode and economist Koleman Strumpf wrote that betting on elections was “common” since the early years of the United States as a nation, but that it “was especially intense during the revolutionary conflicts of the Jacksonian era.” Newspapers, which in those days had a large following, supervised the practice.
Concerns eventually arose that election betting encouraged vote rigging, just as people complain today that base bets are effective. bad games. After the 1844 election, Rhode and Strumpf wrote, members of the Whig Party complained that “the gamblers in favor of Polk committed vote fraud by using the winnings of the election bets to cover their expenses.”
Then, in 1845, the governor of New York, Silas Wright, urged his state legislature to make the “large and rapidly increasing practice of betting on elections” illegal, because of the “corrupt tendencies which characterize the elections themselves.” And, Rhode and Strumpf continue, evangelicals “preached long and hard against election gambling” as part of the second Great Awakening movement.
The craze eventually faded, but it was gaining momentum around the time Wisconsin became a state in 1848. Hence its new state constitution. especially that issuesaying “laws may be passed” excluding bettors in elections “from the right to vote.” Hence the 1849 law.
Why attention returned to this law in 2026
In recent years, on the rare occasions when the law has been seen at all, it has been treated as a fun, archaic phenomenon. curiosity.
But the rise of prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket – and the rise of betting on elections – made it important again.
In March, after Jacobs of the Wisconsin Elections Commission heard a radio story About Polymarket, he published on X: “Friends of WI – I know it’s just outrageous to bet on everything, but you can’t bet on Wisconsin elections! If you do, your vote can be challenged and thrown out.”
Kalshi it has taken a long time position that it does not allow election “gambling,” but “financial products” called “event contracts.” But the commission’s legal staff studied the matter, and he concluded earlier this month that it was “relatively clear” that a Wisconsinite “cannot, even indirectly” bet or bet on an election and then vote in that election.
Press releases voters – and opposition from Kalshi and Polymarket – soon followed.
How the law could (but probably wouldn’t) be enforced
So, what would happen, then, if a businessman eager for an “event deal” decided to vote anyway?
Actually, the answer is: probably nothing.
But if someone else knew that this person was betting and voting in the election, they could come forward to try to stop them.
“You should be there when they come out to vote — or when their absentee ballot is brought in to be counted — and you’d say, ‘I challenge that voter,'” Jeff Mandell, a Wisconsin election attorney, told me. “But the chance that someone is close to the right skills to stop someone on one of these bases strikes me as very slim.”
Another theoretical risk is criminal prosecution. Law enforcement officials can obtain information that people voted in an election they were supposed to vote in and, then, charge them with a crime for illegally voting.
But Mandell said that “that seems like a lot of work” for a prosecutor, adding, “I think the fear about enforcement, whether civil or criminal, is probably overblown.”
Still, Jacobs argued, it’s possible. “This is the law,” Jacobs said. “It’s a situation where, if people have placed a bet, they should consult their lawyer and decide what to do.”
Will the law stand against the courts?
Since Wisconsin’s original state constitution specifically stated that the state could prevent bettors from voting, the law would seem to have a solid foundation.
There is only one thing: That part of the constitution was deleted forty years ago.
The repeal was made as part of a wider overhaul of the document and does not appear to have been specifically targeted at election betting. But it means that the law does not necessarily have the solid constitutional basis it had before.
“Current constitutional language only authorizes Congress to disenfranchise voters on two grounds — criminal conviction or incapacity — which indicates that disenfranchisement on other grounds is not permitted,” Robert Yablon, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor, said in an email.
The law can also be challenged in federal court. As written, the law appears to prohibit even someone who bets $1 with a friend on the outcome of an election from not voting. Opponents may argue that the law is not narrowly focused enough to justify denying qualified citizens their right to vote.
For now, though, the law is on the books, and it says what it says.
“As a policy, it makes sense,” Jacobs told Vox. “You want people to make their voting decisions based on who they think is best for the job – not who’s going to make them the most money.”
While the Wisconsin situation has made national headlines this week, it has largely escaped notice that New York has very similar provisions in its constitution and state law.
of New York the constitution says that no person who “places or is interested directly or indirectly in any wager or bet depending on the result of any election, shall vote at such election.”
In fact, state law states that if a voter’s eligibility is challenged on these grounds, they must swear what is known as “Oath of Bribery,” swearing that they have not been paid to vote in any way — and that they “have not made, or had any direct or indirect interest in any wager or bet depending on the outcome of this election.”
When I asked New York state officials about whether these wagering and wagering provisions apply to Kalshi and Polymarket’s election event contracts, they declined to comment specifically on that.
But the New York attorney general’s office has repeatedly taken that position, in their own right public words and in courtthat prediction markets are “gambling platforms” that should be regulated by state gambling law. (Earlier this month, a judge ruled the government good decision in the suit brought by Kalshi on this, although Kalshi it’s interesting.)
If New York reaches the same interpretation as Wisconsin bookmakers, Kalshi or Polymarket will not be legally allowed to vote in those elections. Of course, doing so comes with the risk of voter disenfranchisement, especially if this guidance is not well publicized or is only tentatively defined.
So, in both states, these very old laws have collided with modern trends – and the result is a big mess.
