Room tax dollars should not go to a business which profits from election betting
Searching on Google brought the following results:
An annotated version:
Like Kalshi, which was described in a previous post, Interactive Brokers offers election betting. Some previous posts brought up the situation with Kalshi.
This post discusses what to do about illegal gambling machines: https://doorcounty.substack.com/p/elected-officials-in-door-county
This post discusses a court ruling involving Kalshi and the state law against voting after placing an election bet: https://doorcounty.substack.com/p/october-2-2024-federal-court-appeals-decision-kalshi-election-gambling
This post has three sections. The third section includes how Kalshi's venture capitalist is an Airbnb board member: https://doorcounty.substack.com/p/some-of-reuters-articles-could-result-in-criminal-charges-against-voters-in-wisconsin
Interactive Brokers, or IB, is up to the same things Kalshi is. But while Kalshi is a relatively new startup focused on online betting, IB is a stockbroker founded in 1978. Only now is it venturing into gambling. Instead of calling their gambling possibilities “bets” or “wagers”, IB claims to offer “ForecastEx contracts”.
It isn’t unheard of for criminals to use euphemistic naming to get people to go along with their crimes. An extreme example of this is how L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, redefined shooting homicides in mentally therapeutic terminology as “auditing”, calling the murders and suicides “R2-45”: https://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Scientology_cult_recording:_R2-45_is_the_act_of_shooting_a_person_with_a_firearm,_20_Nov_1959
For Wisconsin, the definition of what constitutes a “bet” is spelled out in law: 945.01(1). Just like it isn’t possible to legalize murder by referring to it as R2-45, it isn’t possible to legalize betting by defining it as a “ForecastEx contract”. There are some exceptions made in the state law against betting, but none legalize betting on elections.
The practical implication is that IB has, by my rough estimate, tens of thousands of customers in Wisconsin, far more than Kalshi. This increases the incentive for a post-election investigation about voter fraud to look into election gambling. Both IB and Kalshi are located within the United States, making it feasible for law enforcement to either seize their records, or obtain them through corporate cooperation.
Unlike many crimes, where prosecution is a net cost for the government, it is possible that the total criminal forfeitures obtained alongside the fines would prove to be more than the cost of prosecution. Betting in Wisconsin is a Class B misdemeanor, 945.02(1), so the maximum fine per charge is $1,000. Even along with the larger fines for voter fraud, it wouldn’t be enough to pay for all of the expenses. But where there is illegal gambling, there is money that has been obtained through criminal means. If law enforcement can manage to seize it, it could be quite a sum.
This summarizes one such forfeiture in New York:
23-FBI-001153: $5,088.00 U.S. Currency seized from various gambling machines at 1035 Hempstead Turnpike, Franklin Square, NY 11010, seized by the FBI on December 18, 2022 from Frosinone Soccer Club for forfeiture pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 1955(d).
https://www.forfeiture.gov/pdf/FBI/OfficialNotification.pdf#page=28
The following news report from California shows cash which was seized in a similar raid. It also describes an incident elsewhere in the state where law enforcement found $30,000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPCSNscc3VM
Interactive Brokers probably has a lot more than $30,000 laying around in its accounts. How much of that was obtained in a criminal manner through its online betting operation, from Wisconsin bettors? Once seized, it could be added to state or local accounts for general funds and used for government expenses.
Back in 2020, investigating election fraud was a financial drain for the state, https://www.wpr.org/politics/wisconsin-price-tag-michael-gableman-probe-nearing-2-million-report-finds, but in 2024, election fraud investigations could prove just the opposite.
But instead of enriching the government at the expense of criminals, there has been some activity in the opposite direction. Destination Door County has been enriching Google, which has been running ads for election betting. It appears that $393,267.72 was paid out to Google’s parent company, Alphabet, over the course of 2023: https://doorcounty.substack.com/p/possibilities-nerr-education-and-visitor-center
If prosecutors so desired, IB could already be prosecuted under the state code about solicitation, 939.30. The way solicitation works under 939.23(4) is that if someone is “aware that his or her conduct is practically certain to cause that result”, such as, the result of someone voting after betting on an election, it counts as solicitation.
IB ought to include note about how in Wisconsin, you aren’t allowed to vote if you’ve placed a bet on the election. Its customers from Wisconsin, for the most part, don’t know you can’t vote in an election you’ve bet on, so it is practically certain that some IB customers will inadvertently commit a Class I felony from voting after election betting. That IB fails to do so is itself criminal solicitation.
As IB takes its profits, it can use some of them to pay for its advertising budget, such as sponsored search results on Google. This means that Alphabet itself is profiting from election betting. As ballots are cast in Wisconsin, either absentee or in-person, election bettors on IB will be among the voters. As they commit voter fraud, it will also be true to state that Alphabet itself profits from solicitation to voter fraud. Unless of course, Google takes the links to IB’s website down by then, but I doubt it will. I informed Google of what is going on, so it has no excuse.
Instead of benefiting a business which also profits from election betting, the members of the Door County Tourism Zone Commission could vote to redirect the room tax money to a worthwhile cause such as pledges for the NERR Visitor Center, as described in https://doorcounty.substack.com/p/possibilities-nerr-education-and-visitor-center. Or if this is unsuitable for some reason, they should be able to come up with something else.
The next meeting of DCTZC’s Executive Committee is prior to the election, on October 17, 2024, https://doorcountytourismzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Agenda-September-2024.pdf#page=2, so it isn’t too late for them to take a stand against election betting and the voter fraud which accompanies it.
Posts related to elections or districting
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/election-or-districting-related
Posts about taxes
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/taxes
Posts about gambling
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/gambling
Posts about election betting
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/election-betting