Should the federal government allow widespread gambling on elections?

Of course not.

Along with the risks gambling poses to individuals — risks that are becoming even greater with the explosion of online betting — gambling on elections could threaten our democracy itself:

• Gamblers could commit election fraud.

• As bad or even worse, betting could foment widespread distrust in elections by the mere suspicion that fraud is rampant. (This is what Donald Trump has done with his Big Lie, and look at what it is doing to our democracy.)

• Candidates could be bribed or intimidated. (Think of the infamous Black Sox Scandal in baseball or a boxer taking a dive.)

• Artificial intelligence could be exploited to create “deepfake” videos intended to mislead voters and thereby alter an election for the benefit of bettors.

• Election officials could be harassed or threatened in attempts to alter election outcomes. Or they could be falsely accused of wrongdoing by disgruntled gamblers.

• Political betting could drive even more raw partisanship, with voters paying even less attention to actual policies.

That’s why gambling on election outcomes has, by and large, been illegal in the United States.

But a federal appeals court just ruled that a private, for-profit company can run a nationwide gambling operation that would let Americans bet on the outcome of elections — including the current presidential race!

Tell federal regulators:

The last thing our democracy needs is the additional risks that would be all but inevitable by allowing large-scale gambling on election outcomes. Don’t let this appeals court ruling be the end of the story. Keep fighting to preserve longstanding, commonsense rules against betting on elections in the United States.

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For democracy,

- Lisa Gilbert & Robert Weissman, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
 
 
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