Jobs, money, tourism and now civil rights — all these issues have clouded the air as Alabama’s epic gambling battle becomes more complicated.
Now more and more Alabama citizens and high-level officials are calling for a vote of the people for resolution.
But many of the voices chanting, “let the people vote,” may not be as interested in the democratic process as they are in maintaining the gambling operations that fill their coffers.
Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo, said gambling operators want people to vote with a “stacked deck.”
“If the gamblers want to vote, it means that’s their last ditch attempt to stay in business,” Erwin said. “This is their only way because the courts have already ruled that they can’t use slot machines, and that’s their main pipeline of business.
“The only way they can go now is to get the law changed at the legislative level through a constitutional amendment to win this thing and ensure they won’t ever have to go through this again.”
John Tyson, commander of Governor Riley’s Task Force on Illegal Gambling, said if Alabamians want to change their Constitution, “they should proceed in an orderly, lawful action.”
“These illegal gamblers have lost the gambling fight,” he said. “They have lost the legal fight, and now they are trying to win with an illegal approach to changing the law. I’m going to stand and fight, and I hope [readers of The Alabama Baptist] would stand and fight.”
Eric Johnston, president of Citizens for a Better Alabama, said the idea of letting the people vote is a “public relations scam” sponsored by the gamblers.
“When they say, ‘let the people vote,’ they are not letting them do a straight up and down vote,” he said. “They are asking them to legalize expanded monopolistic gambling. They are asking them to make it legal.
“It’s all a subversive way to try to get people to vote on something when they really don’t need to vote on it at all,” Johnston said.
Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale, has sponsored Senate Bill 333, which would allow Alabamians to simply decide whether they want gambling or not.
Although the Tourism and Marketing Committee, headed by Sen. Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, routinely passes pro-gambling legislation out of committee, Beason’s bill has not even been brought up for consideration.
“They want the people to vote on what they want them to vote on,” Beason said. “My bill is designed to let the people vote on whether they want to be a gambling state or not. [The gambling bosses] want their version that will be extremely profitable to a handful of people to make them multimillionaires. They are not really for letting the people vote.”
Erwin wants Alabama residents to look beyond the commercials and media hype.
“Most of the people are going to get pounded with this ‘let the people vote’ … because the gamblers are running the marketing,” he said. “The people have not presented any petitions to the government wanting to do this. … The gamblers have been driving this whole thing. They are trying to make it look like the hundreds of thousands of people of Alabama are asking for this.”
Tyson encouraged readers of The Alabama Baptist to “call their senators and communicate with their representatives. They need to send e-mails, send letters to the editor all over this state. Your leaders need to respond to the call. There is a clear and present danger to this state, and we need them to stand up.”
To contact your senator, call 334-242-7800. To contact your representative, call 334-242-7600.
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