Today, just days from a presidential election, Americans are turning to the polls to assess the state of the race, and many for the first time are also turning to a second source: prediction markets. Since the start of the year, users of these new markets have traded over $2 billion on the election outcome, and the resulting odds have spilled into the mainstream discourse.

Polymarket and Kalshi election odds are now listed on the Bloomberg Terminal, and Polymarket’s mobile app has risen above the New York Times on the App Store charts. Consumers and Wall Street investors alike are drawn to the insights these markets have provided this election season, and if you’re the average citizen political pundit, you likely also view these information aggregators as a clear public service, aimed at separating the truth from the noise. But if you’re the CFTC, you think differently.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has waged a years-long war against political prediction markets. In early 2022 the CFTC issued a consent order barring Polymarket, a crypto-based prediction market, from serving U.S. customers. Later that year, the Commission withdrew a permission slip (“No-Action” letter) it had granted to PredictIt in 2014 which allowed the site, run by Victoria University, to exist as a not-for-profit. After removing PredictIt’s protections, the Commission ordered the platform to close all outstanding contracts within six months. In September 2023 they came for Kalshi, blocking it from offering a prediction market on which political party would control Congress after the 2024 election. As if this targeted harassment was insufficient, in June they proposed an outright ban of political event contracts on CFTC-registered exchanges.