Kalshi bans Ben Midgley for betting on his own Maine governor race
Prediction market platform Kalshi banned former Maine Republican gubernatorial candidate Ben Midgley for three years and fined him $5,434 after finding he placed bets on his own candidacy. Midgley, who finished second in the GOP primary after ranked-choice voting, wagered less than $1,000 on himself trading on the election in which he was a candidate. The ban was imposed by Kalshi as an enforcement action, officials said.
Kalshi has now expelled three politically connected traders in quick sequence, each case sharpening the competitive cost for rivals. Polymarket and ForecastEx still lack comparable public enforcement records against candidate or lawmaker self-trading. Regulators and lawmakers now have concrete precedent to demand replication across every CFTC-registered venue.
Platforms without similar detection speed risk looking negligent by comparison. The fixed template is platform exile first, regulatory filing second. Each new ban raises the bar for what self-policing must look like in political event contracts. Kalshi's mounting record strengthens its position before Congress and state attorneys general.