The Senate of North Dakota has turned down a resolution that was seeking to allow local voters to decide on whether sports betting services should be legally offered in the state.
The bill, called House Resolution 3032, received the overwhelming support of the state’s House in February and moved to the Senate for a further vote. First, the proposed legislative measure failed with a narrow difference on Friday, March 19th. After an absent senator revived the bill then, the proposed piece of legislation eventually failed on Monday, March 22nd.
If the Resolution had been passed by the Senate, the proposed measure would have been placed on the state’s ballot on November 2022 in order for local voters to decide whether to make sports betting legal in the state. As the proposed measure was rejected by the Upper Chamber of North Dakota’s Legislature, this will not happen.
Senator Scott Meyer shared that he supported the sports betting measure because it would have permitted the state to regulate and tax a sector that has already been present in North Dakota but offers its services illegally to local residents.
Another Senator from the Fellow Grand Folks Republican party – Ray Holmberg – reminded that state lawmakers repeatedly turned down the chance for participation in a multi-state lottery twenty years ago, so voters decided to be the ones to act on the matter and passed an initiated ballot measure. He explained that lawmakers should once again consider the addition of legal sports betting services in North Dakota so history does not repeat itself.
North Dakota Legislature Rejected Another Sports Betting Measures Two Years Ago
As mentioned above, despite the fact that the proposed bill passed the House by a wide margin in February, it failed by a single vote in the Senate (23-24).
Previously, both lawmakers and voters in North Dakota were hostile to gambling expansion. Recent years, however, saw them change their opinion and eventually allowing more games of change to become available in the state.
This is not the first time when the state’s Legislature has decided to make a move in terms of sports betting legalization. Two years ago, another bill seeking to make the new form of gambling legal in North Dakota was passed but the legislators rejected the expansion, stripping the state of the chance to become part of the states that already gave the green light to the practice.
So far, about two dozen US states have already decided to make a move and try to capitalize on the ruling of the US Supreme Court that eliminated a federal ban on sports betting. The Court’s decision provided states to individually decide whether to legalize the practice and take advantage of the fresh money flow that the new form of gambling is supposed to bring to coffers, or not.
