By CNBC
Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and Maricopa County, Arizona, have adopted policies addressing employee prediction market activity. Officials say the rules are meant to prevent financial conflicts, protect workers from allegations and reassure voters, not respond to evidence that election workers have used the markets.
CNBC’s Ananya Chetia reports on how prediction markets are prompting new safeguards and raising questions about nonpublic information and voter trust.
“Imagine if we did not have this policy and not one of our employees did something like this, in which they acted with ulterior motives in a prediction market… But then after an election, someone was upset with the results, accused one of our employees of doing something like that to enrich themselves,” said Maricopa County Supervisor and Rose Law Group Partner Thomas Galvin.
“I have seen when I travel the distance, when I travel the county, that some people confuse the numbers reflected in prediction markets with public opinion polling. 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,” Galvin added.
“Obviously, we have no control over prediction markets themselves or how people react to them, or how they interpret those numbers that are being published. But we can only control over what we have jurisdiction over. And so when we implement a policy for our employees not to trade or bet on nonpublic information, that goes a long way toward showing people that not only are we working hard to maintain transparent elections, but also shows that we are being very aware of new technology,” Galvin says.
More to know…
Supervisor Galvin led and sponsored the County’s policy that the county’s 13,000 employees are prohibited from using non-public information to bet on elections with prediction markets. This also applies to all county business including high-profile court trials and weather event announcements.
Maricopa County is the first large county to implement this policy.