Dino Rossi Hopes To End Poker Felony Laws If Elected Governor
Posted on 9 May 2008 at 11:25 am EDT by goodwithafork | Permalink
The republican politician Dino Rossi hopes to take a second run at the governor seat in Washington this year. He lost in 2004 to Christine Gregoire, the governor that signed a bill that made gambling and playing online poker a Class C Felony in Washington. The Class C felony category also includes child molestation. That seems like more then a little bit of a stretch to compare an online poker player to a child molester, one of the worse crimes I can personally think of.
Rossi feels that the bill is beyond the boundaries of what government can regulate. He hopes to win this fall in Washington and hopefully will do something about such an absurd bill. Rossi was quoted as saying that if he were in office at the time there was no way he would have signed such a bill in the first place.
I think it’s crazy that for playing online poker in Washington you could receive a felony that includes up to five years in prison for your ‘crime’. Going to prison from playing online poker is probably one of the most absurd things I have read about in a long time. Strangely enough most don’t think that officials will enforce this law, but it could really come back and ruin someone’s life if they stepped on the wrong toes.
I think politicians need to talk to the poker players of the US and see where the people stand on such issues. If they’re in office to represent us, how does such a law benefit all the people who still play online poker? Something needs to be done to prevent such laws, and hopefully Dino Rossi gets the opportunity to this fall in Washington. We’re certainly not criminals and to group online poker players in the same category as child molesters is plain wrong.
