Wisconsin lawmaker proposes banning elected officials from prediction markets
Wisconsin lawmaker Crowley has proposed banning elected state officials from prediction markets and stock trading. Crowley said prediction markets should be used for sports rather than profiting off politics. The proposal would also prohibit state employees from using insider knowledge to inform bets placed in prediction markets. The plan comes amid broader scrutiny of public officials' financial activities. The state-level push adds Wisconsin to a growing set of jurisdictions restricting government employee participation in event contracts.
The Wisconsin proposal deepens the patchwork of public-employee bans that Kalshi and Polymarket must track manually. Each new jurisdiction layers employer-specific rules with no uniform penalty, forcing platforms to build geofence logic around government email domains and title databases. Crowley's framing — that prediction markets belong in sports, not politics — arms critics who want election contract categories removed entirely.
The insider-knowledge provision is broader than prior county bans, covering any state worker who touches non-public information. Platforms now face reputational risk if a Wisconsin employee is caught betting, even without a final law. Arizona and Pennsylvania counties have already shown local administrators can act without waiting for statehouses, tightening compliance costs ahead of November.