PPA's New Campaign Encourages Poker Players to Vote

A new campaign by the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) is aiming to increase poker's political presence in Washington as we lead up to the 2008 presidential election.  Since the 2008 US presidential election is approaching soon thousands of special interest groups have descended on Washington DC to make sure the issues that are important to them  are raised.

Since poker is obviously important to poker players, we are now the latest lobby group to target the Capitol with a Poker Players Alliance campaign circulating on the internet.  The campaign is headlines by a website that carry's the election themed name of Poker 2008.  There you will find a video that features Mike Sexton, Howard Lederer, Annie Duke, Chris Ferguson, Jennifer Harman and Andy Bloch all encouraging poker players to register to vote.

The video starts with a powerful message, "the PPA recognizes that political power comes in voters."  Then there are short clips of professional poker player saying things like, "politicians care about poker because their constituents care about poker."

According to the website, PPA's mission is "to establish favorable laws that provide poker players with a secure, safe and regulated place to play. Through education and awareness the PPA will keep this game of skill, one of America's oldest recreational activities, free from egregious government intervention and misguided laws."

So the basic message from the PPA in my opinion is if you want to play poker online and offline do your part register to vote so you can have your say.  We need to speak up because right now poker online and land based is in a semi legal status in the United States.  Right now there isn't a federal law that bans someone from playing online poker but some states do have criminal laws that prohibit online gambling.