Kalshi Asks Influencers to Take Down Sponsored Conspiracy Posts About the LA Election

Prediction market Kalshi tried to clean up the apparent mess on Friday after some of its influential relationships essentially made it appear it was paying to distribute conspiracy material online, Semaphore reports. The posts have now been removed at Kalshi’s request.

However, similar sponsored posts linked to Kalshi’s competitor, Polymarket, do not seem to be disappearing.

The news event that gave rise to this issue was the Los Angeles mayoral election. In California politics, this concept is known to locals as the red mirage, in which Republicans appear to dominate on election nights – as if our deep blue state is finally having the change of heart that America ostensibly fantasizes about.

Republicans too much Did They tend to be influential on election night, due to the fact that Republicans have their votes counted first in their voting patterns. But it’s been a few days since the June 2 primary, and Republicans’ hopes for their preferred outcome are slowly fading. This is making people suspicious. And some of them have branding relationships with big prediction markets.

Notice how mail-in ballots arriving at the last second always vote Democrat

Totally a coincidence, nothing to see here https://t.co/6bYH6kvLov

– Kangmin Lee | 이강민 (@kangminlee) June 4, 2026

For example, right-wing influencer Kangmin Lee posted an embed of a Polymarket post on Below that post it is written “payment sharing”

Here’s another similar sponsored post, this time from right-wing commentator Benny Johnson:

The public has so little confidence in California’s elections that they just assume the Democrats are going to dramatically rig it with questionable ballot counting days after Election Day https://t.co/yXOaY1HEUP

– Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 4, 2026

“The public has so little confidence in California’s elections that they assume the Democrats are going to dramatically rig it with questionable ballot counting in the days after Election Day,” Johnson says.

Johnson is wisely avoiding blaming others for the conspiracy theory, and he’s not entirely wrong about the public’s attitude toward elections in California, either. Here in California it’s common to wait weeks for election results, which leads to this horrible phenomenon where you painstakingly figure out how you want to vote on dozens of issues, lose track of who or what you voted for, and then when the results come in – probably sometime next month – you just don’t care anymore. There’s no good reason it should be this way, and I know everyone hates it.

But the important thing is that (so far) it does not appear that anyone has tampered with the votes.

It appears that, little by little, the election night lock to conservative mayoral candidate and ex-reality TV villain Spencer Pratt’s second place finish is loosening, and he may soon be completely overtaken by progressive Nithya Raman — not because the votes are changing, but because they are being counted at a slower rate. For unrelated reasons, only the first and second place candidates make it to the November ballot.

This creates discrepancies: at the time of this writing, the latest vote tally shows Pratt getting 28.2% of the votes and Raman getting 24.9%. However, on Polymarket, Raman’s chances of advancing to the second round of voting are now 95%, and Pratt’s at 6%. This is life in a deep blue city (by the way, Spencer Pratt says he’ll leave L.A. if he doesn’t become mayor).

Now, according to Semaphore, Kalshi has requested that paid influencers remove posts “that raise doubt about the integrity of the Los Angeles mayoral election.” Semaphore says one such post, which has since been removed, was from the “Gunther Eagleman” account, which is David J. Freeman, a right-wing influencer who has 1.7 million followers. Freeman wrote, “Is CA committing fraud to oust Spencer Pratt?” And according to the semaphore, a Kalshi post was embedded. An approving quote from that post – which is now broken – said, “Yes they are cheating.”

Another since-deleted

One can only assume that, seeing that these sponsored posts have been removed, conspiracy theorists are surely packing up their walls and finding more productive ways to spend their time.

Semaphore says Kalshi and Polymarket fund “hundreds” of influencers. In a report on Friday, Politico found that a Polymarket executive sent at least $350,000 to influencers through a personal PayPal account between last year and January this year, according to a review of transaction records.

Regarding the now-removed posts, Kalshi spokesperson Dani Lever told Semaphore that it had “asked for these to be removed because they violate our affiliate marketing policies.” Polymarket did not return to Semaphore.

Gizmodo also contacted Polymarket for clarity regarding its policy regarding these sponsorships or any statements regarding posts. We will update this article if we get any response.