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.