Seminoles Has Fired Back On Las Vegas Sands
According to recent reports, the Seminole Tribe of Florida had a clash with the Las Vegas Sands this week. Standing Up For Florida, a Seminole-backed group, blames the casino organization’s PAC for violating the election laws. With its PAC, Sands has started collecting enough signatures to ensure casino expansion on the ballot by November.
Standing Up For Florida had lodged its third-party complaint and counterclaim against the Sands-gathered Florida voters who are in Charge in the Leon County courthouse. A few allegations it contains are nothing but too shocking.
A deadline of Feb 1, 2022, is when the counterclaim comes to its heel so that the ballot initiatives reach around 900,000 verified signatures. The last check by the Florida Secretary of State’s website said that Sands’ PAC or Florida Voters in Charge had surpassed halfway through the deadline with 481,974 verified signatures.
Although there’s still a lack of necessary signatures on the ballot, the initiative for casino expansion is outpacing the same sort of initiative by DraftKings and FanDuel. That campaign, focused on the sports betting expansion in Florida, had only gathered 321,148 verified signatures.
Getting Insight Into The Third-Party Complaint
Judge Dempsey, a Tallahassee-based judge, rules against Standing Up for Florida’s motion for dismissing; the group has introduced a third-party complaint and a counterclaim. “The constitution of Florida is under attack” was the opening statement by the group.
Also, the complaint specifics are equally dramatic. It involves the accusation that Florida Voters In Charge collaborated with a third-party group to indulge in illegal payment schemes. If that’s true, all the collected signatures will get rendered void.
As per the third-party complaint and counterclaim, the alleged fraud extends beyond the illegal compensation scheme. It also includes:
- Completion of missing data – knowingly done illegally,
- Illegal shredding of petitions.
- The alleged forged signatures, including the signature of the Supervisor of Elections.
Alleged Pay-Per-Signature Compensation Scheme
The Florida Voters in Charge get accused by the Standing Up for Florida that they hired the Game Day Strategies, which is a petition gathering group. Purportedly, the Game Day Services conducted outsourcing of the signature-gathering to several other firms.
Standing Up for Florida stated in its complaint that they expended millions of dollars to expose the continuous fraud and put an end to it. Also, the Seminoles allege that Florida Voters in Charge gave payment to these groups on a pay-per-signature basis, which is a prohibited scheme under Florida law.
Future Impacts For Gambling Expansion In Florida
Recently, some hits have been taken by the future of gaming in Florida. The compact between the Seminole Tribe and Governor Ron De Santis had struck the efforts of including a provision to revisit iGaming in the near future. It got worse when the compact was struck down entirely by the federal court in the District of Columbia.
The fact is that neither of any recent gambling expansion initiatives will likely end by November. Even if there’s a failure in the challenge to the signatures, Florida Voters in Charge is far away from getting the most out of them by Feb 1. Also, the sports betting expansion by FanDuel and DraftKings seems like a long shot.
