Election Officials Are Preparing for Prediction Markets to Sow Chaos in the Midterms

选举官员正为预测市场可能在期中选举中引发混乱做准备

When Jim Allen, the elections director for Delaware County, Pennsylvania, recently ran a training session for poll workers, he began a conversation about a topic he’d never previously had to address during training: prediction markets. “There was one person who stood up, and they said, ‘Well, what if we just want to make a minor bet on what turnout will be, that’ll keep things interesting?’ And we said: ‘No, this is all bad,’” Allen, who oversees 383 precincts, recounts.

宾夕法尼亚州特拉华县选举主任吉姆·艾伦（Jim Allen）最近在为投票站工作人员进行培训时，开启了一个他此前从未在培训中涉及的话题：预测市场。“当时有人站起来说：‘如果我们只是想对投票率下个小注，让事情变得有趣点，这行吗？’我们回答说：‘不行，这非常糟糕。’”负责管理 383 个选区的艾伦回忆道。

As a result, Allen and the board of elections in Delaware County amended the oaths signed by people involved in elections to include “an affirmation that the workers have no direct or indirect interests in any bets, wagers, or prediction markets.”

因此，艾伦和特拉华县选举委员会修改了选举相关人员签署的誓词，增加了“确认工作人员在任何赌注、博彩或预测市场中均无直接或间接利益”的条款。

Some 2,500 people, including everyone from full-time staff in the elections office to temporary employees helping process ballots on Election Day, have signed the oath ahead of November’s midterms.

在 11 月的期中选举前，约 2,500 人已经签署了这份誓词，其中包括从选举办公室的全职员工到选举日协助处理选票的临时工在内的所有人员。

“The rapid growth of prediction markets, and their plans to prey on elections, are direct threats to undermining trust in electoral outcomes,” Allen tells WIRED. “The overriding concern is that prediction markets have the potential to monetize a reward for manipulating results and, equally concerning, capitalizing on the anger and frustration by those who lose in these prediction markets.”

“预测市场的快速增长及其利用选举牟利的计划，是对破坏选举结果信任的直接威胁，”艾伦告诉《连线》（WIRED）杂志。“最令人担忧的是，预测市场有可能将操纵选举结果的行为货币化，同样令人担忧的是，它们还会利用那些在预测市场中输钱的人的愤怒和挫败感来获利。”

Increased Threats

威胁加剧

With less than 100 days left until the midterms, and with President Donald Trump and members of his administration working overtime to undermine trust in American democracy, WIRED spoke to election officials across the country struggling to get their heads around how prediction markets could further complicate Election Day.

距离期中选举还有不到 100 天，唐纳德·特朗普总统及其政府成员正加班加点地破坏人们对美国民主的信任。为此，《连线》采访了全国各地的选举官员，他们正努力应对预测市场可能如何进一步使选举日复杂化的问题。

Last week’s Wisconsin gubernatorial primary showcased how large the discrepancy can be between prediction market odds and how a race actually shakes out, as both Kalshi and Polymarket had progressive candidate Francesca Hong as the likely winner until the results started coming in. (Traditional polling was also wildly off.) Election officials see risk in this type of scenario, where people place too much confidence in the probabilities shown by the markets and make wagers expecting guaranteed money. There’s also concern over whether prediction markets could fuel aggression against poll workers and other people involved in elections, something that some officials say they’ve already witnessed.

上周的威斯康星州州长初选展示了预测市场的赔率与实际竞选结果之间的巨大差异——在计票结果出炉前，Kalshi 和 Polymarket 都认为进步派候选人弗朗西斯卡·洪（Francesca Hong）是可能的获胜者。（传统的民意调查也出现了严重偏差。）选举官员认为这种情景存在风险，即人们对市场显示的概率过于自信，并期望通过下注获得“稳赚不赔”的收益。此外，人们还担心预测市场可能会助长针对投票站工作人员及其他选举相关人员的攻击行为，一些官员表示他们已经目睹了这种情况。

Prediction markets “fed a lot of the volatility in the aftermath of the June election,” says Dean Logan, county clerk for Los Angeles County, the country’s most populous election jurisdiction, during a webinar organized by the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions. “I won’t go into great detail about how that resulted in threats or aggressiveness from observers or people who had a stake in the outcome of the election, but it is something that we definitely saw, and we saw it at a level that we haven’t seen in prior elections.”

“预测市场加剧了 6 月选举后的许多动荡，”全美人口最多的选举管辖区——洛杉矶县的县书记官迪恩·洛根（Dean Logan）在由“大型选举管辖区伙伴关系”（Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions）组织的在线研讨会上表示。“我不会详细说明这如何导致了观察员或在选举结果中有利益相关的人员发出的威胁或攻击性行为，但这确实是我们亲眼所见的，而且其程度是我们在以往选举中从未见过的。”

“Let us be unambiguous: Threatening an election official or poll worker is a crime, and Kalshi condemns it in the strongest terms, full stop,” Kalshi spokesperson Jacki McGavick says. Both Kalshi and Polymarket tell WIRED that they will not allow markets about whether there will be unrest at the polls.

“让我们明确一点：威胁选举官员或投票站工作人员是犯罪行为，Kalshi 以最强烈的措辞谴责这种行为，毫无疑问，”Kalshi 发言人杰基·麦加维克（Jacki McGavick）表示。Kalshi 和 Polymarket 均向《连线》表示，他们不会开设关于投票站是否会发生骚乱的预测市场。

One of the concerns election officials repeatedly raised was that voters appear to be confused about just what the odds in election markets represent. This was backed up by a recent survey conducted by the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, which found that 75 percent of respondents were unable to correctly say what prediction market odds represented, with 35 percent of respondents claiming they were either counted votes or official projections from state officials.

选举官员反复提出的担忧之一是，选民似乎对选举市场中的赔率究竟代表什么感到困惑。这一点得到了“大型选举管辖区伙伴关系”最近一项调查的支持，该调查发现 75% 的受访者无法正确说明预测市场赔率的含义，其中 35% 的受访者认为这些赔率代表已计票数或州政府官员的官方预测。

“Prediction markets are a form of speculation, but they are increasingly being presented, and in some cases interpreted, as indicators of likely election outcomes,” Logan tells WIRED. “The challenge is that many people don’t distinguish between a market reflecting the views of participants and the official election process.”

“预测市场是一种投机形式，但它们正越来越多地被呈现，在某些情况下甚至被解读为选举结果的指标，”洛根告诉《连线》。“挑战在于，许多人无法区分反映参与者观点的市场与官方选举程序之间的区别。”

For years, election deniers have leveraged the fact that many election processes are not very well understood by the general public to push disinformation. Now, officials are concerned that misunderstanding what predictions markets represent will make that situation even worse.

多年来，选举否认者一直利用公众对许多选举程序了解不足的事实来散布虚假信息。现在，官员们担心，对预测市场含义的误解将使这种情况变得更加糟糕。

“What happens when there’s a difference between what the prediction markets show and what the certified results show?” Amy Cohen, executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors, tells WIRED. “That’s hard, because you’re combining two topics that the general public doesn’t have a great understanding of, which is elections and prediction markets.”

“当预测市场显示的结果与认证结果出现差异时，会发生什么？”美国州选举主任协会（National Association of State Election Directors）执行主任艾米·科恩（Amy Cohen）告诉《连线》。“这很棘手，因为你将公众并不十分了解的两个话题——选举和预测市场——结合在了一起。”

While election officials consider how to address these issues, prominent prediction market trader Caleb Davies sees some fears over market integrity as overblown. “They sound like valid concerns, but I just don’t think that they hold up to much scrutiny,” he says. If somebody attempts to manipulate a race by spiking the odds in favor of an underdog, there will be politics traders monitoring the market who see an opportunity to make money correcting it. “A smart trader is going to see that and then drive them right back to being an underdog almost immediately and just make the profits from it—it’s not a wise strategy.”

在选举官员考虑如何解决这些问题的同时，知名预测市场交易员凯莱布·戴维斯（Caleb Davies）认为，对市场诚信的一些担忧被夸大了。“这些听起来像是合理的担忧，但我认为它们经不起推敲，”他说。如果有人试图通过拉高赔率来操纵竞选，使处于劣势的候选人看起来更有胜算，那么监控市场的政治交易员会发现这是一个通过纠正赔率来赚钱的机会。“聪明的交易员会发现这一点，并几乎立即将赔率拉回劣势水平，从而从中获利——这并不是一个明智的策略。”

Polymarket spokesperson Annabel Walsh made a similar point. “Other traders will recognize that there’s an opportunity to turn a profit off of that artificial boost,” she says. There are recent examples of how this type of market will quickly correct when a trader appears to attempt to skew the results; when asked about this risk, Kalshi sent WIRED a case study it published on an event during the Los Angeles mayoral election. In that incident, someone on Kalshi placed an enormous bet on Spencer Pratt winning that was notably out of step with how he was polling; it skewed the odds for 9 seconds. Still, concerns remain that manipulation is possible, especially in races with fewer participants.

Polymarket 发言人安娜贝尔·沃尔什（Annabel Walsh）也表达了类似的观点。“其他交易员会意识到，利用这种人为的拉升获利是一个机会，”她说。最近有一些例子表明，当交易员试图扭曲结果时，这种市场会迅速自我修正；当被问及这种风险时，Kalshi 向《连线》发送了一份关于洛杉矶市长选举期间某事件的案例研究。在那次事件中，Kalshi 上有人对斯宾塞·普拉特（Spencer Pratt）获胜下了巨额赌注，这与他的民调结果明显不符；赔率因此被扭曲了 9 秒钟。尽管如此，人们仍然担心操纵行为是可能的，特别是在参与者较少的竞选中。