By Pratik Chougule
The CFTC’s second public comment period on Kalshi’s proposed election contracts received seven times the number of comments it got during its first comment period back in August 2022.
The vast majority of these comments are against Kalshi’s proposal.
In the first 26 days of the 30-day comment period, the CFTC only received four comments.
Then, on the 27th day, more than 1,300 comments against Kalshi’s proposal came in.
Jonathan Zubkoff, Kalshi’s community manager, publicly speculated that these comments were possibly AI-generated.
I doubt this. The comments, in my view, almost certainly came from real people who were motivated to speak out after learning about the issue from Public Citizen.
Ralph Nader founded Public Citizen in 1971. His work has run the gamut from car seat regulation to environmental policies. He also ran a third-party candidacy for president in 2000, which is what probably tipped the election to George W. Bush.
I bring this up to say that he’s had enough time and high-profile influence to build up a massive newsletter email list.
What I think happened is that the staff at Public Citizen wrote their own comment letter opposing the contracts and blasted it out to their email list, which in turn generated a barrage of comments to the CFTC.
For further thoughts on Public Citizen’s engagement, see my podcast with Mick Bransfield at Star Spangled Gamblers.
Pratik Chougule is the executive director of the Coalition for Political Forecasting. Follow him on Twitter @pjchougule
