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A fake poll caused some mayhem in the Los Angeles mayor’s race. Now people are wondering whether there’s anything that can be done about it.
An outfit calling itself Median Strategies released what it said were results of a survey taken in late July and early August showing incumbent Mayor Karen Bass leading her opponent, city Councilwoman Nithya Raman, by nearly 12 percentage points.
Median Strategies now says it was a “short-term social experiment” designed to test how vulnerable politics and journalism were to fake results.
It’s exactly the sort of thing the Commodity Futures Trading Commission warned about in 2024, when it tried to bar online betting on the outcomes of political races. The CFTC, in trying to deny Kalshi a license to offer contracts on political races, said fake polls could be used to manipulate the market, allowing insiders to swoop in and buy at distorted prices.
No evidence has emerged, but the idea that the poll was an attempt at manipulation has made the rounds on social media.
“Seemed like it was an attempt to influence [Kalshi] pricing,” Paul Mitchell, a political data guru, said on X.
The CFTC didn’t respond to an inquiry this week from “Seen, Heard & Whispered,” and we’ve been told that there doesn’t appear to be a criminal probe into Median Strategies at this point.
Some legal experts suggest there would need to be a financial loss for the company to face charges.
“If someone could demonstrate they had financial losses because of the fake poll, there could be a case for common law fraud,” said Rick Hasen, an election law scholar who teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Alexander Vindman was so confident of victory in Tuesday’s Democratic Senate primary in Florida that several days before the vote, he sent out an invitation to a “victory fund” fundraiser to be held this weekend in the liberal enclave of Nantucket, Massachusetts.
Mr. Vindman was swamped in the primary by state Rep. Angie Nixon, who triumphed by 12 points while running on a democratic socialist platform.
Now Mr. Vindman’s problem isn’t raising more money, but figuring out what to do with the millions he kept in his campaign account, unspent, which he figured he’d use in the general election.
Source: Read the original article on www.washingtontimes.com
