A candidate qualifies if they openly state they don’t believe in God on or before Election Day. This includes atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, skeptics, rationalists, and the like.
“Culturally religious” people, such as secular Jews, may qualify if their disbelief in God is more likely than not (in my assessment). I'll do this on a case by case basis. If you have any questions on my assessment, ask before you trade, and I will clarify.
2024-08-31 update: I will consider Jamie Raskin to be a non-believer for the purposes of this prediction market. See my comment below for more details.
I expect to resolve the question as soon as elections are consistently called by major reputable media sources such as the AP, Reuters, and a majority of TV networks and major newspapers. If there is uncertainty, I will wait until the state certification process. If this drags out for some reason, we might have to wait until all relevant candidate are sworn in on Friday, January 3, 2025.
1,000
3.00Seems to unambiguously be Jamie Raskin, Jared Huffman and Bernie Sanders, which would mean this resolves to 3. Do you agree @DavidJames ? anyone else you had in mind?
Important clarification: I changed "Culturally religious” people, such as secular Jews, may qualify if their disbelief in God is clear." to "Culturally religious” people, such as secular Jews, may qualify if their disbelief in God is more likely than not (in my assessment)." If you have already traded in this market and genuinely feel like this interpretation negatively impacts you, please let me know.
Jared Huffman (D-CA) is openly a humanist: https://huffman.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/humanist-in-the-house
Here I will explain my reasoning for including Jamie Raskin as a non-believer.
First, I will ask the question directly: does Jamie Raskin (D-MD-08) believe or not believe in a god?
> Raskin said, “I’ve never pronounced upon the existence of a divinity before, and nobody has ever asked me.” The article stated, “If asked in the political sphere, he says he wouldn’t answer.” In a system that does not have a religious test for office, Raskin’s answer is sufficient. That’s all you get, folks.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/maryland-state-sen-jamie-raskin-jewish-atheist-humanist-does-it-matter/2016/05/13/f9b926f4-16d3-11e6-971a-dadf9ab18869_story.html (If paywalled, you can access the story via the Internet Archive.)
It is notable that Raskin proposed a National Day of Reason with Jared Huffman (D-CA): https://raskin.house.gov/2023/5/rep-raskin-introduces-resolution-to-recognize-a-national-day-of-reason
Based on Raskin's stances and statements, I'm going to categorize Raskin, for the purposes of this prediction market, as a "non-believer". Some may disagree on the technicalities. However, if one were to ask a machine learning clustering algorithm, "Is Raskin closer to the non-believer cluster or a believer cluster?" the answer would be abundantly clear.
If you've traded in this market and genuinely feel like this interpretation negatively impacts you, please let me know.
Erik Hurt (D-IN-08) is an atheist running in 2024. See: https://www.cfequality.org/members/endorsements/2024