Today the Poker Players Alliance is spending seven hours lobbying members of Washington State’s legislature in the city of Olympia. Participants hope to convince officials to overturn a ridiculous law that makes playing online poker in Washington State as serious as a Class C felony.
Text from a press release sent by the PPA earlier this week clarified their urgency of their push for reform:
“In Washington, playing poker online is now a felony – like child pornography or heroin possession – making any of the over 800,000 Washington residents who can legally play poker in card rooms look like hardened criminals if they play online.”
As mentioned earlier, the law is completely ridiculous and thank goodness the PPA has decided not to take the passage of this law lying down. Truth be told, Washington State residents should have been up in arms over this law, and protesting it on a consistent basis as soon as it was passed.
There’s one problem I see with the PPA holding their lobbying rally today. It’s St. Patrick’s Day. Don’t get me wrong, the importance of this lobbying effort can’t be stated enough, but again, it’s St. Patrick’s Day!
Drinking, gambling, and carrying on go hand-in-hand. So you can see why a lobbying effort to be held on St. Patrick’s Day makes me raise an eyebrow. I’m just wondering how many residents are missing this effort because they are already at the bar getting Irish drunk because after all, that’s what people do, on ST PATRICK’S DAY!
That said, it’s our hope that the seven hour lobbying effort is a successful one and draws more attention to absurdity of the law against online poker.
