On election night in November 2025, the culmination of months of trading, the results were not just reported—they were traded. On platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket, users bought and sold “event contracts” on whether a candidate would win, with prices shifting in real time as new information came in. In the New Jersey governor’s race, Kalshi’s market indicated that Mikie Sherrill would win more than thirty minutes before any major news outlet called the race. As the result became clearer, contracts that had been trading at steep discounts moved rapidly toward full value, tracking the implied probability of the outcome as it changed. [1] What looked like a new form of civic participation also raised a classification problem under the Commodity Exchange Act. More fundamentally, it raises a question of federalism. Absent a clear statement from Congress, should federal derivatives law be read to displace state and tribal authority over gambling?

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