How NOT To Run A Lottery
Publication Date: 10/11/05
With the startup of Oklahoma's lottery less than 24 hours away the Oklahoma State Lottery Commission caved in to political pressure and changed the rules.
No, the rules change does not directly impact those persons willing to go against the odds and purchase lottery tickets. It does however impact some merchants that had in good faith applied and been approved to sell lottery tickets. Merchants that had made modifications to their facilities and/or operations to accommodate lottery equipment and players and who are now left holding an empty lotto bag. Merchants that probably have justification to sue for breach of contract and who probably will, costing the state millions in legal fees over a rules change made less than twenty-four hours prior to the start of the lottery.
On 10/11/05 the Oklahoma State Lottery Commission reversed its earlier rules and decided to prohibit pawnshops, payday loan companies and check-cashing stores from selling lottery tickets. Governor Henry and several lawmakers said financially strapped Oklahomans could be taken advantage of if sales were allowed by those retailers.
Neither Governor Henry or the concerned lawmakers have announced any plan to deter financially strapped Oklahomans from purchasing lottery tickets at a convenience store next door or down the block from a pawnshop, payday loan company or check-cashing store. But give them time and they will probably propose some silly kind of 'distance restriction' wherein convenience stores, gas-stations and other merchants within a specified distance of the businesses today prohibited from selling lottery tickets are also banished from their sales.
With the Oklahoma State Lottery Commission breaking trust with merchants over the sale of lottery tickets how can we trust them not to break trust and change the rules on lottery players?
This fiasco on the eve of the start of the Oklahoma Lottery is NOT how to run a lottery.
But it is how one is run in Oklahoma...
