Countless residents in the state of Florida, have come to enjoy and benefits from online sweepstakes games as a form of harmless entertainment, supplemental income, and other product benefits. At no immediate or significant financial risk, these games offer an additional way for those residents living on fixed incomes, and/or struggling to keep up with the soaring cost of living in the state.

Unlike gambling in casinos, these games do not pose a serious threat to the economic stability of the player, if anything it enhances it. In addition, they neither interfere with nor pose competition to entities like the Seminole Casinos because those casinos do not offer a free method of entry to participate in their games like sweepstakes do. It also does not impact the State's Lottery because there is also no free method of entry. Both the State of Florida Lottery and Seminole Gaming do not offer the opportunities that sweepstakes games do. They also do not monitor, advise, restrict, or deny players as much as sweepstakes do, which protects participants and the sweepstakes companies from fraud and abuse. Sweepstakes require proof of identity through multiple forms of verification and residency verification. These controls are far from present in both the State of Florida Lottery and Seminole Gaming.

As Governor DeSantis has declared he is trying to reduce to burden of extraordinarily high living expenses in Florida, from insurance costs to the high cost of homeownership, and other high costs of living in Florida... it's beyond compression that they would attempt to take something away that contributes to the relief from the issues and already exists and is benefiting thousands of people. These new proposed restrictions will take all these benefits currently provided by sweepstakes games away.

The importance of these games on the personal economies of hundreds of thousands of Floridians cannot be overstated. In fact, according to the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, over 15% of Florida residents are on fixed incomes (Source: DEO). This means that a significant proportion of our population would be directly affected were online sweepstakes to be made illegal. A move to ban such games would not be just restrictive, but downright insensitive to the needs of many of the residents of this state, especially those that have limited options in their ability to earn supplemental income from other means.

We are not requesting special privileges, just the continued ability to participate in these sweepstakes that contribute positively to our lives and our ability to positively supplement it. We respectfully implore that the state of Florida keep online sweepstakes games legal. Sign this petition to show your support and protect the rights of many fellow Floridians.