The deadline for citizens of California to submit petitions that would place their propositions on a ballot has come and gone, and that means residents there will not get to vote on whether the state should or should not establish an online poker room.
Tony Sandstrom announced that he intended to collect 430,000 signatures in order to have a referendum placed on next year's ballot that, if approved, would force the state of California to create and operate an online poker room. Most of the proceeds that would've been generated by the room would go to road construction, particularly the repair of potholes.
The deadline to submit was Dec. 1. Sandstrom collected exactly one box of signatures, or, as he put it, "about 400,000 short." This was Sandstrom's first foray into the world of public policy, and he did it completely on his own. He acknowledges that he was outmanned from the start, and if he tries to tackle this issue again, he will seek the assistance of a larger group to help generate interest.
