Don't Sign

Gambling promoters failed to get their initiative on the District's ballot this year, but they haven't given up.

THE GOOD NEWS is that the out-of-town gambling interests bent on bringing video slots to the nation's capital have decided against trying to put the gambling initiative on the November ballot. A lack of confidence in the validity of the reported 20,000 signatures they collected in order to place the measure before the voters probably had something to do with it. The bad news is that the promoters of addictive electronic gambling machines -- dubbed by some experts the "crack cocaine" of the industry -- intend to continue collecting signatures and wait for the next scheduled election in January 2008. For citizens opposed to the plan to clutter Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, Good Hope Road SE in Ward 8 and similar D.C. sites with video slot machines, the rallying cry remains the same: Don't sign the video slot ballot petitions.

Residents of Ward 8 seeking positive economic development understand all too well the negative impact of gambling machines in a community struggling to shake off crime and intent on improving both its image and economic well-being. Those Ward 8 concerns, however, are secondary to the interests of gambling promoters based in the U.S. Virgin Islands, who look at the District and see only dollar signs. At whose expense they make their money matters little. For them, the prospect of imposing large-scale gambling on Washington trumps all. The city got a taste -- a bad taste -- of their ambition two years ago when local election authorities found their effort to put a gambling initiative on the 2004 ballot to have been marred by fraud, forgery and chicanery that made a mockery of D.C. election laws. But they are here again, trying to buy their way into the District by bringing in nonresidents and paying them reportedly $2 for every "valid" signature they collect.

Community activist Dorothy Brizill, who organized and successfully led opposition to the 2004 campaign, has urged residents to "continue to be vigilant as they continue to circulate these petitions." Confronted with a "pie-in-the-sky, fun for all" video slots petition, residents should be primed to say no.