Mark Warner and Alex Padilla are pushing for answers from the people who run the Polymarket and Kalshi prediction market platforms amid reports that the platforms are paying influencers to spread election disinformation.
How is this even a thing, by the way?
“We are seriously alarmed that your marketing strategy includes paying numerous social media influencers willing to espouse unreliable information on elections,” the senators wrote in a letter to the leaders at Polymarket and Kalshi, who the Democrats accuse of “subsidizing — and amplifying — social media influencers who echo President Trump’s baseless attacks and sow distrust in American elections.”
People can legally bet on anything now, including elections – and as we know from everything else that involves betting activity, there’s incentive to try to fix the game.
What else we know from the betting world: the house always wins.
The question here isn’t on that the market owners profit, but on how.
Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Padilla, the ranking Dem on the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, detailed the nature of the thumb on the scale.
Paid Polymarket and Kalshi influencers have been spreading false claims of election fraud, and pushing the so-called SAVE Act, which Trump has been pushing as a means to get more voters off the rolls.
“In July, a series of major social media influencers, including former Congressman Matt Gaetz, all posted similar ‘paid partnership’ posts linking to Polymarket and Kalshi charts showing the odds of enactment of the SAVE Act dropping to all-time lows,” the senators noted in their letter.
“As Majority Leader Thune has noted, much of the pressure on the Senate to pass the SAVE Act, rooted in false claims of widespread election fraud, comes from ‘paid influencers.’ These paid posts on X, some of which have been removed for violation of X’s policies, added commentary that either undermined confidence in U.S. election integrity, advocated for the passage of this partisan, anti-voter legislation, or both.”
A letter isn’t going to stop people who make money by trying to influence elections into going in the direction they want them to.
That’s why the senators make these letters public, so that we can know the dirty stuff going on behind the scenes.
“We urge you to act now to reevaluate all paid influencer relationships regarding elections, thoroughly vet all existing and future paid influencer arrangements, and immediately terminate any existing relationships with those who spread election misinformation, disinformation, or undermine the integrity of U.S. elections,” the letter concluded.
I mean, they won’t – stop doing the dirty stuff.
But more of us know what’s going on.
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Chris Graham
