Definitions
charged means having a criminal complaint, indictment, or other charging document accusing someone published by any US government entity such as a federal, state, local, or tribal government. A civil lawsuit, a congressional report, or a congressional impeachment will not count. The charges must be officially made available to the public. A leak does not count. A press release from an US government entity referencing the charges is sufficient. The document must be made public by the specified time. An unsealed indictment dated in the past, made public after the specified time will not count.
interfering means causing the election vote counts to change in a manner that violates criminal law. Attempted election interference does not count, the charges must allege that a person did so successfully.
2024 US general election means any federal, state, local, or tribal election, referendum, ballot measure, proposition, ballot question, or other voting activities scheduled for Tuesday, November 5, 2024 organized by a US government entity within the boundaries of the contiguous United States, Alaska, or Hawaii. Elections organized by US territories do not count. If a voting activity is postponed but was originally scheduled for the above-mentioned date it will count.
before 2026 means before January 1, 2026 00:00 in UTC−10:00 (Hawaii time).
I will not participate in this market because I may have to judge stuff like what "other voting activities" includes. I will try my best to apply canons of construction to interpret the definitions. You are welcome to poke holes and ask hypotheticals and I may amend the definitions.
I'll give some hypoteticals for you to clarify on what counts as "interfering" and being charged for such.
1. Someone is charged with voting twice. No grand conspiracy, just individual voter fraud.
2. there is a jan-6 style riot (or attempt at one) with people charged with crimes similar to what is listed in the DOJ document: https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/30-months-jan-6-attack-capitol#:~:text=Approximately%20350%20defendants%20have%20been,police%20officers%20were%20assaulted%20Jan. I'm especially interested in whether you'd count: "assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees", "corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding", and "conspiracy to obstruct a congressional proceeding,", in relation to the staff and proceedings that process the election results a la jan 6th 2020.
3. A winner (or rather, their appointed DA/DOJ/or other agency) corruptly and falsely/spuriously charges political opponents with some crime that you would certainly deem counts had it been earnest/non-spurious.
4. Someone is indicted rather than charged (I'm not well versed in legaleses to fully understand the difference, but you may want to read up so that if someone posts a link to an indictment, you'll know if that counts. I think they are different but I'm not sure how different.)
I thought about excluding this somehow but I can't seem to find a way. I read the press release for the Jason Schofield case and googled around for information. I can't seem to find the actual charges and how many people he was alleged to have illegally casted votes for. I want this question to be easily resolvable so I decided to included cases like the one you described. The case you described would cause this question to resolve YES. (I really don't like that the charges themselves aren't made public, I wish I could limit the definition of election interference to a specific set of sections in Title 18 of the USC)
Remember that attempts do not count. If the rioters actually managed to change the votes then it would count, but merely obstructing doesn't. They would actually have to, as I stated in the definitions, "caus[e] the election vote counts to change".
Being charged is being charged, I really don't want to judge if the charges are legitimate, that's literally the courts' job. If this question was for a conviction then it would take forever to resolve, I don't think too many people will be interested in a market that resolve in 5+ years.
Good point. I thought they were the same thing too until I googled. I will rephrase some of my definitions.
Charges come before indictment and it says charged in the title so I will stick with charges.
@Calvin6b82 - Re #2, ah yes, you did clarify that in your description already.
Just to triple-check, when you say "If the rioters actually managed to change the votes then it would count" just to check, you mean if they are charged with actually doing so, correct? As you say in your response to #3, you are not here to work out if charges are legitimate or not.
Re #4. Interesting. In my cursory googling, it seemed the other way around.
I will defer to your reading (since I bought some yes shares and so counting more things as 'charges' is a good thing for me), but I'd encourage you to check more sources to make sure your more confident on the matter.
For instance: https://thelawdictionary.org/article/what-is-the-difference-between-an-indictment-and-a-charge/
says "Generally speaking, an indictment, also known as a “true bill” may be viewed as a formal accusation undergoing an official investigation before moving forward with charges."
while this says:https://www.federallawyers.com/criminal-defense/indicted-vs-charged-what-do-they-mean/#What-is-an-Indictment-2
"Most criminal cases begin with the prosecutor filing charges... However, in some circumstances, an indictment may be used instead."
Perhaps one (orboth) of these sources or wrong, or maybe it varies by context or jurisidction.
Ah yes obviously they would have to be charged and the charging document has to say they change the count somehow or their actions obviously (to me) definitely changed the count.
I have changed the definitions to include both charges and indictment, whichever comes first will count.