Forget, for a moment, the rhetoric of the Oxford County casino campaign and focus upon where everyone agrees: The enacting legislation, as currently written, is an unmitigated disaster.

The text consumes – in landscape format – three pages of 11- by 17-inch paper. The bill drops Maine’s gambling age to 19 and places the casino president as a “voting member” on numerous state boards.

It gives Evergreen Mountain a 10-year monopoly on gaming and removes limits on slot machines registered in the state. It also might, according to whom one speaks with, let the casino extend credit to gamblers.

(Olympia Gaming, which owns Evergreen Mountain, says it doesn’t. Maine’s top gambling official has testified that it could. This is an ambiguity, though Olympia, to its credit, said extending credit wouldn’t happen, either way.)

The bill funds a laundry list of programs, including some that look defunct, like a “fractionation development center.”

Casino spokesman Pat LaMarche says the bill needs a “gallon of Whiteout” to conceal its errors. Her foil, Dennis Bailey of CasinosNo!, has derided the text as “larded.” It is nice to see them agree on something.

Yet this ends there. Olympia promises to work with legislators to repair the bill’s flaws. It has ceded lowering the gambling age and board seats, to that end.

This leaves the rest of it, though, to the biggest game of chance of all: the legislative process.

Olympia wants voters to gamble that lawmakers, in concert with the company, will craft responsible legislation from this mess. We think these proposed stakes are too high.

Instead of promising fixes, Olympia should revise the legislation to its liking and present this version to the public, prior to Election Day, as its casino bill.

The gesture would give voters something – even if it is a sample – to consider, instead of pledges of cooperation. Olympia is a newcomer, so we’re uncomfortable taking them at their word. The Legislature, however, is a known entity.

We’re just as uncomfortable trusting them.

All agree the bill is a debacle. But only one needs voters to approve it anyway. Olympia is promising to work with legislators to fix it, using gallons of correction fluid if necessary. This is an electoral gamble, plain and simple.

Gambling is Olympia’s business, but not the business of voters. Let’s see its preferred casino bill, before Election Day.