Delaware County adds prediction-market conflict oath for election workers

Delaware County, Pennsylvania, has amended the oath signed by election workers to require an affirmation that they have no direct or indirect interests in any bets, wagers or prediction markets. About 2,500 people signed the revised oath ahead of November's midterms, including full-time staff in the elections office and temporary workers helping process ballots on Election Day.

The change grew out of poll worker training, according to Wired, where the issue came up for the first time. Jim Allen, the county's elections director, said a worker asked whether making a minor bet on turnout would keep things interesting. His answer was blunt: "No, this is all bad."

Allen and the county board of elections then amended the oaths signed by people involved in elections. The revised language was designed to make clear that workers could not have a direct or indirect stake in any betting market tied to elections.

Allen likened the risk to referees betting on the outcome of a basketball game. He said the rapid growth of prediction markets and their plans to prey on elections are a direct threat to trust in electoral outcomes, and argued that such markets could create a reward for manipulating results while also profiting from the anger of people who lose money on them.

The Delaware County move sits inside a wider scramble by election officials to understand how prediction markets could complicate Election Day. Wired reported that, with less than 100 days left before the midterms, officials across the country were trying to work out the impact, while a Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions survey found that 75% of respondents could not correctly say what prediction-market odds represented and 35% thought the odds were counted votes or official projections from state officials.

A Pew Research Center analysis found that combined monthly global trading volume on Kalshi and Polymarket rose from less than $5 billion in September 2025 to about $24 billion in April 2026, underscoring how quickly the markets have expanded.