In three months, Marylanders will make up their minds -- once and for all, it is to be hoped -- about allowing slot machine parlors in the state. The issue will be on the Election Day ballot.

Arguments pro and con pile up and frequently concern contingencies, especially location -- in your backyard, good; in my backyard, bad.

Slots are supposed to build new schools to ease overcrowding, revive the faltering horse racing industry and stem the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars in gambling revenues that flow to states with slots, such as West Virginia.

The reasons seem compelling.

Gov. Martin O'Malley, for one, seems convinced. He allows that slots are not a panacea, but that slots revenue should be "in the mix" of the state's finances.

Without slots, "we will have a hole left in the state budget," the governor last week told a group of editors from Patuxent Publishing Co., which publishes The Eagle.

"I don't have a plan B," he added.

That sounds ominous.

But let's, for a moment, imagine that slots pass and it is 10 years from now, 2018.

Does anyone envision that school overcrowding has ended and students have every educational resource at their disposal?

Perhaps fatter payoffs in horse racing will have revived that industry, but will communities with slots be better off? Or will family paychecks be going into the machines?

Will we be hearing, "Thank heavens the Marylanders of 2008 had the foresight to legalize slots and bring us this prosperity."

Or, will it be, "Problems persist. Now we need casinos with table games to build the schools we need."

Consider that the lottery was once sold to us as a fix-all. And consider that slots once were legal in Southern Maryland until citizen anger forced their phaseout by 1968.

We think that beneath the slots glitter there is no gold, or at least much less than promised. And the downside -- the impact on society of a new and convenient kind of gambling -- could be pernicious.

Voters should reject slots this November.

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