Campaign staffers are still placing bets on their own races through prediction markets despite a monitoring system Kalshi built specifically to stop them, NPR reported July 9. At least one campaign operative listed in Federal Election Commission records was able to trade on a contest they were working on even after the new system went live.

Kalshi, the largest prediction market operator, rolled out the screening tool in May by cross-referencing FEC filer data against its own user logs to flag accounts tied to campaign staff. Robert DeNault, the company's head of enforcement and legal counsel, told NPR that "dozens" of staffers have attempted to bet on their own candidates since the system launched, and that Kalshi blocked those trades. But the one confirmed miss shows the FEC-matching approach has a significant gap, even as Kalshi has publicly promoted it as a safeguard.

The May rollout came days after NPR first reported that campaign staffers were using private polling data to profit on rival platforms Polymarket and PredictIt, which staffers themselves described as a "Wild West." Neither Polymarket nor PredictIt agreed to sit for interviews for the July 9 story. Polymarket instead sent a written statement saying it has made close to 100 referrals to law enforcement across all its markets, one of which led to an arrest.

The gap in FEC-based screening reflects a structural mismatch. Two former FEC commissioners told NPR that commission filings are incomplete by design for identity verification purposes — volunteers, contract pollsters, outside counsel and subcontractors frequently go unnamed in FEC reports. That means anyone functioning as de facto campaign staff without a formal, disclosed role can trade without triggering Kalshi's filters. Sean Cooksey, appointed to the FEC by President Trump in 2020 and chair during the 2024 cycle, was among the officials NPR consulted on how FEC data gets compiled and where its gaps lie.

The Brennan Center, in a report cited in the NPR story, warned that election prediction markets carry the potential to "fuel misinformation and efforts to influence election outcomes" heading into the 2026 midterms — a concern that predates this specific enforcement gap but bears directly on it.

Kalshi's enforcement infrastructure has expanded rapidly since February. The company disclosed its first public insider-trading enforcement actions on February 25, including a case against an editor for MrBeast, the same day the CFTC issued an advisory on insider trading across event contract markets. On March 23, Kalshi announced it would block politicians and athletes from trading on markets tied to their own races or competitions, publishing guardrails that cited screening tools, whistleblower channels and cooperation with sports leagues. The company's Market Integrity Hub now states that candidates and sitting officeholders are barred from trading on their own elections, enforced at account signup, and maintains a public list of blocked-trader categories.

That framework was tested on April 22, when Kalshi suspended three congressional candidates for what it called political insider trading, fining them in addition to the suspensions. The CFTC followed with its own disciplinary and enforcement actions on April 22 and 23 targeting insider trading in event markets, according to a client alert from Lowenstein Sandler. Congressional Democrats pressed the agency the same week to tighten its regulatory approach to the sector.

Congress itself remains divided on how far to go. The House held off on a prediction-market ban on May 19 despite bipartisan calls for prohibition, leaving House lawmakers and staff — unlike their Senate counterparts — still free to trade on these platforms. As of March, neither chamber's ethics committee had issued financial disclosure guidance for event contracts comparable to existing stock-trading rules, even as billions of dollars move through these markets weekly.

The persistence of insider trades despite active screening points to a structural problem rather than a compliance lapse at any single firm. FEC data was built for campaign finance disclosure, not for real-time identity verification against a betting platform's user base. The categories of people who influence a campaign's internal information — unpaid advisers, informal consultants, family members with access — often sit entirely outside what the FEC requires anyone to report.