Washington State Setback
Published: Wednesday, May 03, 2006 Online-Casinos.com
WASHINGTON STATE SETBACK
Online poker is a no-no thanks to Maggie's Bill
The right of individual American states to legislate against online gambling
and poker has been exercised by the state of Washington.
Early this year Democratic State Senator Margarita Prentice introduced
legislation in the Washington Senate aimed at “reaffirming and clarifying"
the prohibition against internet gambling in Senate Bill 6613. The Bill included
provisions to exclude the state lottery from selling tickets over the Internet
and imposed heavy penalties for offenders.
Encountering little opposition, Maggie's Bill was given even stronger penalties
in February with the punishment for engaging in online wagering boosted to up
to ten years in prison, a punitive level hitherto reserved for serious criminals
like sex offenders. Two weeks later the Bill was passed in the senior hall of
the state government in Olympia by a 93-5 margin.
It was signed into state law by Washington State Governor Gregoire on
March 28th, and will become effective this June 7th.
The background to the new law is intriguing. Washington state has a number of
Indian tribes that are allowed by sovereignty treaty to run their own casino
operations, and theoretically this authority could be extended to the online
sector as a licensing arrangement not dissimilar to that of the Kahnawake in
the Quebec Province of Canada - unless there was a specific law on the books
that prevented them from doing so.
Changing the law for a more enlightened approach would be a problem, requiring
a 60 percent majority of both bodies of government in the state of Washington
to override the law just passed.
Surprisingly, some anomalies surround the new prohibitive law. For example,
there does not appear to be a governing body set up to regulate and enforce
its provisions, and it is unlikely that the already hard-pressed state troopers
will get involved according to observers. The question of enforcement is also
bedevilled by practicalities like the difficulty of state-imposed monitoring
of online activities of residents, and the likely opposition that this is likely
to engender. Perhaps wisely, if impractically this aspect was left out.
Observers have been quick to point out that Senator Prentice, as the sponsor
of the banning law has been the recipient of several contributions from the
well established Washington land casino and gaming interests. In the state of
Washington, there are 65 casinos and poker rooms, and residents of the state
can also step across the border into Canada, where the province of British Columbia
offers five more land gambling venues.
