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Georgia Senate Bans Poker Machines
This week the Georgia Senate unanimously passed a bill to ban all machines and other gambling devices. Atlanta Democrat Senator Mike Polak, sponsored the bill to legislate that payouts in the form of cash payouts or other prizes with cash value would be illegal, but not to ban the machines themselves. Republican Sen. Jeff Mullis of Chickamauga supports the bill, being quoted by 11alive.com as stating, "I think that video poker is a cancer, and we just performed legislative surgery."
Senator Mike Beatty, Republican-Jefferson, further pushed the momentum of the bill when his proposed ammendment was definitively passed.The ammendment defines five basic kinds of game machines as "gambling devices," and as such, making them illegal. Senator Polak called the ammendments a case of "Overkill" and cited his concerns that many family restaurants and video arcades have these kind of games solely for the amusement of patrons, or that pay winners with toys or other small items of low value. He believes the ammendment to the bill will have unintended consequences, such as punishing honest business owners and putting their employees out of work. Polak was quoted as saying, "In our eagerness to try and fix and problem, we created a bigger problem," and that he hopes the House will review the ammendments when it meets next week.
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