Voters who believe Government should hold a referendum on gaming have one more week to sign a petition calling for a ballot.

A pressure group launched the petition in January after Government dropped a pre-election pledge to let the public decide if the activity should be legalised.

Campaign organiser Jonathan Starling said his group had now almost completed the task of reviewing and validating signatures, and will keep the petition in circulation for another week in “a last push” for support.

Although a final number has yet to be confirmed, in February Mr Starling estimated that around 4,000 people had signed the petition.

This morning Mr Starling said: “Our team is going over the collected petition signatures and comparing them with the Parliamentary Registrar, painstakingly removing duplicates, names not appearing on the registrar and signatures that are not legible.

“This is a mammoth task, and I cannot commend those working on this, or who have contributed otherwise, for their diligence and commitment.

“While we respect all residents of Bermuda, we felt that it was only responsible that this petition should only include voters, seeing as only voters would be eligible to participate in any referendum.

“We still have to round up some additional petition sheets with collected signatures still out in the community. We are in the process of ensuring that all petition signatures are fully accounted for and included in the final submission. We will allow another week and provide the voting public a last opportunity to sign the petition.

Once we’ve collected the outstanding sheets and finished this last push, we’ll be in a position to release a figure for the completed valid signatures.”

Mr Starling thanked campaign colleagues for their help in “this mammoth undertaking” and said the campaign had been “an exercise in democracy”.

“It is important to stress once again that this petition is neither for nor against casino gambling, only for a referendum on the issue of casino gambling, as was promised by both parties in the 2012 election and by the Government until December 2013,” he said.

“A referendum provides the best way to provide an informed decision on this issue, as well as settling it, one way or another, providing clarity to residents and investors alike.

“To promise a referendum and then to revoke that promise at the eleventh hour, and after revelations of public monies being spent on developing a strategy to engineer dropping a key election promise, it threatens to make a mockery of our democracy and set a dangerous precedent for the future.

“We hope that this petition contributes to ‘doing the right thing’ and giving the people a say on this issue.”