By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews Staff
Maryland’s top election official spent four weeks moving from “under review” to an on-the-record criminal referral — but the target got smaller along the way.
On July 23, State Elections Administrator Jared DeMarinis sent a one-page letter to the Office of the State Prosecutor asking it to investigate whether prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket are violating Maryland’s ban on wagering on election outcomes. “From my plain reading of the statute and how the sites operate, I believe they do,” DeMarinis wrote, adding that if the law isn’t clear, the prosecutor’s office should recommend “any action you determine to be appropriate.”
It’s not unprecedented — Arizona pursued criminal charges against Kalshi over election-betting violations first, and lost at the federal level, at least for now. But it’s a rare and serious step for a state official to take, and it asks for considerably less than DeMarinis himself floated a month earlier.
What Changed Since June
When DeMarinis first went public with his concerns, in a June 23 interview with Maryland Matters, he framed prediction-market trading as indistinguishable from a bet: “To me, they are making a wager. They are making a bet.” Speaking to ABC News around the same time, he was noncommittal about whether he’d actually pursue it — “Whether or not I go after the prediction markets — I don’t know,” he said, calling it “definitely under review” — but he described the exact mechanism he’d eventually use: “If we have credible information about illegalities and it’s not within our civil citation authorities, we will of course refer those matters to the office of the state prosecutor for enforcement.”
The July 23 letter asks the prosecutor to examine the platforms and the statute; it does not ask for action against anyone who traded on them.
At the time, DeMarinis left open the possibility of going after individual Marylanders who placed trades — hundreds of thousands of dollars moved through Kalshi and Polymarket on primary races this cycle. The July 23 letter drops that entirely. It asks the prosecutor to examine the platforms and the statute; it does not ask for action against anyone who traded on them.
That’s a meaningful narrowing worth flagging: DeMarinis went from threatening bettors and platforms alike to formally targeting only the platforms, even as his public language got more certain, not less.
DeMarinis went from threatening bettors and platforms alike to formally targeting only the platforms, even as his public language got more certain, not less.
The Statute — and a Federal Court Has Already Weighed a Nearly Identical Case
The law DeMarinis is invoking is narrow. Election Law § 16-902 reads, in full: “A person may not make a bet or wager on the outcome of an election held under this article.” A violation is a misdemeanor carrying a fine of $50 to $500, paid to the state, and the statute separately requires that any money deposited as a bet be forfeited to the governing body of the county where it was deposited — the destination is written into the law itself, even if working out amounts and jurisdiction in practice could get complicated.
Maryland’s own record in court, on the sports-betting side, currently favors the state: a federal judge denied Kalshi’s request for a preliminary injunction against Maryland’s gaming law, ruling state authority can coexist with CFTC regulation. But that’s not final — Kalshi has appealed to the Fourth Circuit, with oral arguments already heard in May, and a ruling is still pending. Nothing about Maryland’s position is settled yet, even on sports contracts.
The far more direct precedent — and the one DeMarinis’s letter doesn’t address — comes from Arizona, which is the one other state that has tried exactly what Maryland is now attempting. In March 2026, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a 20-count criminal case against Kalshi, including four counts specifically for election wagering — covering bets on the 2028 presidential race, the 2026 Arizona governor’s race, the Arizona GOP gubernatorial primary, and the Arizona secretary of state race. The CFTC intervened on Kalshi’s behalf, winning a temporary restraining order in April and then a preliminary injunction in May, with U.S. District Judge Michael Liburdi ruling that federal law preempts state gambling law as applied to CFTC-regulated platforms. Arizona’s criminal case is, in the words of one legal outlet, “dead in the district court” — though the state hasn’t said whether it will appeal to the Ninth Circuit. If that ruling holds, it means the exact enforcement path DeMarinis is now opening the door to — criminal charges over election-specific wagering on a CFTC-registered platform — has already been shut down once at the federal level, in the case most factually similar to Maryland’s own.
That doesn’t necessarily doom a Maryland version of the same fight — Arizona’s case and Maryland’s statute aren’t identical, and the CFTC’s win there is itself still subject to appeal. But it’s the single most relevant data point for how this could go, and it points toward the referral running into the same federal wall Arizona hit.
The Comparison Nobody Can Actually Make
DeMarinis’s referral treats the trading itself as the problem, and the informal jab in reaction to his announcement — that regulators should be asking why the markets called things better than the polls — assumes there’s data to back that up. There isn’t, at least not for this cycle.
Maryland had exactly two genuinely competitive primaries where markets and polling could theoretically be compared: the crowded MD-05 race to succeed Steny Hoyer, and the McClain Delaney-Trone rematch in MD-06. Neither holds up as a clean test.
In MD-05, Kalshi and Polymarket had Adrian Boafo around an 80% favorite weeks before the primary, climbing toward 90% in the final stretch; he won a fractured 24-candidate field with about a third of the vote. But no independent polling of that race surfaced publicly at all — there’s simply nothing to check the market against.
Nobody can currently point to real data showing whether Maryland’s prediction markets called this primary better or worse than public polling.
In MD-06, the only public polling was released by the McClain Delaney campaign itself: an internal survey putting her up 49%-38% on Trone in a head-to-head trial heat in mid-April, with prediction markets pricing her win probability at around 89% by primary day. She ultimately won with 43.8% to Trone’s 37.4% in the actual eight-candidate field. That looks like confirmation for both polls and markets, but the comparison doesn’t really work: a campaign-commissioned internal poll isn’t an independent baseline, a two-candidate trial heat isn’t measuring the same thing as an eight-candidate field, and “win probability” and “vote share” aren’t the same unit to begin with.
The upshot: nobody — not DeMarinis, not the markets’ critics, not their defenders — can currently point to real data showing whether Maryland’s prediction markets called this primary better or worse than public polling, because usable independent polling barely existed for the one or two races where it would have mattered. That’s arguably the more interesting failure here: a state weighing criminal enforcement against a forecasting tool without any apparatus in place to check whether the tool works.
A state is weighing criminal enforcement against a forecasting tool without any apparatus in place to check whether the tool works.
Context DeMarinis Didn’t Mention
The referral also lands two weeks after DeMarinis’s office received a seven-page letter from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division — signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon — threatening him with criminal conspiracy and civil rights charges over voter-roll compliance and noncitizen voting. DeMarinis called that letter, part of a coordinated push sent to election officials nationwide, “a nice love letter from the Department of Justice threatening my arrest,” and said it was meant to intimidate.
An election official facing a federal criminal threat over voter rolls chose this moment to initiate a criminal referral of his own.
The two matters are legally unrelated — one is a federal voter-eligibility fight, the other a state gambling-law question. But the sequence is notable on its own terms: an election official facing a federal criminal threat over his handling of voter rolls chose this moment to initiate a criminal referral of his own, against an industry whose product is forecasting the elections he administers.
State Prosecutor Charlton T. Howard III has so far declined to say anything about DeMarinis’s letter, citing his office’s standard policy against commenting on the existence, status, or details of any investigation. That means there’s currently no public confirmation Maryland has even opened a file on this — only that DeMarinis asked one to be opened.
There’s currently no public confirmation Maryland has even opened a file on this—only that DeMarinis asked one to be opened.
The National Picture Just Got Louder
The one state that tried criminal charges over election-specific wagering on a CFTC-regulated platform didn’t get far.
New York became the highest-profile state yet to go after Kalshi directly, doing so the same week as this story: Attorney General Letitia James sued the company on July 31, alleging it’s running an unlicensed gambling operation that exposes underage users to betting, and seeking triple the company’s New York gains plus civil penalties. Kalshi called it “political theater” and argued no single state can shut down a federally licensed exchange. The American Gaming Association — the casino industry’s trade group, which has consistently backed state crackdowns — praised the suit.
Maryland’s referral is a small piece of a genuinely unsettled national fight—not an outlier.
That brings the platforms’ active legal exposure to more than 20 lawsuits nationally, from state regulators, tribes, and individuals, with rulings splitting in both directions: state wins in Nevada, Massachusetts, and Michigan; CFTC/platform wins in Minnesota, Tennessee, and (for now) Arizona. Maryland’s referral is a small piece of a genuinely unsettled national fight, not an outlier — but it’s also not the first time a state has tried to use criminal law rather than civil suits to make the point, and the one state that tried that before Maryland didn’t get far.
Sources: DeMarinis’s July 23 letter to the Office of the State Prosecutor and coverage of it in Maryland Matters and The Daily Record; DeMarinis’s June 2026 comments to Maryland Matters and ABC News; Maryland Election Law § 16-902, verified against the 2005 and current 2024 Maryland Code on Justia; the Fourth Circuit docket for KalshiEX LLC v. Martin (No. 25-1892) and reporting on its May 2026 oral arguments from the Maryland Appellate Blog and DeFi Rate; Arizona’s criminal case against Kalshi and its federal-court outcome as reported by Courthouse News Service, Arizona Mirror, PYMNTS, and DeFi Rate; the Justice Department’s July 8 letter to DeMarinis as reported by Maryland Matters; the Office of the Attorney General of Maryland’s statement on the CFTC comment letter; New York Attorney General Letitia James’s July 31 lawsuit announcement and coverage in CNBC, CBS News, and CNN; WTOP and NBC News primary results reporting; and a Montgomery Perspective republication of an April 2026 internal campaign poll, which carries the normal caveats of campaign-commissioned research.
Keep MDBayNews Reporting Free
MDBayNews exists to help Marylanders understand decisions made by state and local leaders — especially when those decisions affect daily life, rights, and public services.
If this article helped clarify what’s happening or why it matters, reader support makes it possible to keep publishing clear, independent reporting like this.
Have a tip or documents to share?
We review submissions carefully and confidentially. Anonymous tips are welcome when appropriate.
Discover more from Maryland Bay News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.