Our Case

Why You Should Vote Against Slots:

1. Amends Maryland’s Constitution in order to spread gambling to every corner of the state: The slots referendum will amend our state’s Constitution to allow 15,000 slot machines into every corner of Maryland: Baltimore, Ocean City, Anne Arundel County, Cecil County & Allegany County. Putting gambling into our Constitution makes it that much harder to get ride of when it doesn’t work.

2. Don’t trust Politician in Annapolis on Taxes: Slot machine gambling will not fix our economic problems in Maryland, they will only add to them. Despite what the pro-slots advocates want you to believe, expanding gambling in Maryland won’t lower your taxes. But these are the same people who just raised your taxes by a billion dollars and slots are part of that plan. Its not slots or higher taxes, with Annapolis, they want to stick you with both. What Maryland needs is lower taxes, controlled spending and more economic growth, not a cheap political fix that will only worsen the mess we’re in and put an added burden on working families.

3. Slots bring more costs than revenue: The simple fact is that the cost of slots outweighs any revenue. Politicians in Annapolis want us to believe that slots will close the budget gap, but they aren’t factoring in the increased costs of more crime, new roads, more police and addiction counseling that will all come along with slots. Don’t believe Annapolis when they tell you this will solve our budget crisis. Slots are “fools gold” and we can do better.

4. Been there, done that, didn’t work: Maryland has been down this road before. We tried slots in the 1950’s and 1960’s and organized crime came in and took over local governments. The crime and corruption was so bad that the local communities of Southern Maryland rose up and called for the end of slots. Marylanders learned that slots where more trouble than they were worth and finally banned slots. Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past.

5. Slots will not fully fund anything: Remember when Annapolis told us the lottery would fund education? Didn’t happen. Now they want voters to believe that slots will fund education. Slots don’t actually mandate any new money for education; they simply allow politicians to move numbers around a balance sheet. Slots will, in fact, cost the state money. Who will actually get rich are out of state gambling executives who stand to make hundreds of millions off this gambling monopoly.

6. Slots mean hundreds of millions to Out of State Gambling Interests: In hard economic times, let’s not create a gambling monopoly and send hundreds of millions of dollars, every year, of our hard earned money to gambling executives and out of state gambling corporations. Slots take money away from small businesses, churches and charities.

7. This is not the kind of state we want Maryland to be. Maryland is known for the high tech jobs it attracts, the high standard of healthcare it has, and its commitment to education. Our “brand” should evoke the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins and the National Institutes of Health – not slots casinos. We want to be leading the efforts in education and health, not debasing ourselves by engaging in a gambling arms race with other states to add the most slots.