WASHINGTON (Map, News) - When officials forget their sworn oath that obliges them “to protect and defend the laws of the District of Columbia,” the results can be disastrous. During the past several weeks, a gang of thugs converged on the nation’s capital to get a slots gambling initiative on the ballot for the November General Election. They violated city laws and intimidated residents with impunity.

All of this is as old as polyester bell-bottoms. Two years ago, a crew from California and Florida did the same thing. The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, motivated not by its determination to uphold the law but by citizens’ challenges, charged the group with massive fraud, and levied more than $600,000 in fines.

Jeffrey Robinson, the attorney for the committee sponsoring this year’s initiative, had asserted that his group shouldn’t be judged by someone else’s past — except that the same person who backed the effort in 2004, Shawn Scott of the U.S. Virgin Islands, is backing this latest attempt to bring 3,500 video lottery terminals to economically depressed Anacostia. Furthermore, the current committee repeated the 2004 performance: There were reports of Mafia-like intimidation, misinterpretation of laws and the fraudulent circulation of petitions apparently filled with unqualified signatures.

Smartly, they decided this week not to submit those petitions. Robinson says they’ll work to get the measure on the ballot in 2008.

Robinson et. al. weren’t halted by elections officials or the mayor or the D.C. Council — although Council Member Carol Schwartz attended a rally against slots.

Even as complaints poured in, Wilma Lewis, chairman of the elections board, did nothing to rein in Robinson’s crew. Lewis believes the elections board is her private preserve, replete with a lexicon of legalese too thick for average citizens to understand and a management style that would shame even a Third World dictator. She asserts that the board is only an adjudicative body and cannot investigate violations of the law on its own. She doesn’t fully understand her job.

The mayor has said he doesn’t support gambling, but didn’t lobby against the Robinson effort. Council Chairman Linda Cropp introduced legislation earlier this year requiring initiative proposers to pay outstanding debt to the city before being allowed to move forward. Her bill is stuck in the legislature she leads.

Not unlike 2004, the task of defending democracy — and enforcing election laws — fell to a collection of residents including attorney Ronald L. Drake; DC Watch founders Dorothy Brizill and Gary Imhoff; Anthony Muhammad, chair of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 8A; and Thelma Jones, head of the Fairlawn Citizens Association. This is the group, which doesn’t collect the huge salaries and stipends offered to elected and appointed officials, that stopped Robinson and his crew.

The group’s success is testimony to what informed, passionate and organized citizens can do. It’s also a glaring example, yet again, of District leaders’ failure to honor their oath of office.

Jonetta Rose Barras is the political analyst for WAMU radio’s D.C. “Politics Hour with Kojo and Jonetta.”