Group still trying to undermine Arkansas Lottery

Jun 20, 2010, 7:52 pm (16 comments)

Arkansas Lottery

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — As state higher education officials mail out notices to the first recipients of Arkansas' lottery-funded college scholarships, a group that fought creation of the lottery says it is gearing up to start its anti-lottery campaign anew.

Jerry Cox, executive director of the Christian conservative Family Council, says the group is making the lottery its No. 1 issue for next year's legislative session.

The group has drafted two bills that would impose limits on lottery operations and will push for their passage in the 2011 session. The group also plans to create an anti-lottery website and has launched a fundraising campaign for its effort to, as Cox said in a letter asking for donations, "start our lottery fight anew."

"At this time the lottery legislation is at the top of our list," Cox said in an interview last week. "And just because we have these two bills, that doesn't mean that these are the only bills that may be offered."

The Family Council has set a modest fundraising goal of $1,000. That would be enough for "seed money" to get the projects started and would show that the public is interested, Cox said.

The measures the Family Council want the Legislature to pass would ban lottery ticket vending machines and ban all lottery advertising.

Cox said the Family Council opposes the lottery's plans to use vending machines mainly because of concerns that underage people will use the machines.

The machines will check users' ID for their age, but "it's real simple for a 15-year-old to find an 18- or 19-year-old that will loan him a driver's license," Cox said.
Lottery officials have said the machines will be monitored to ensure that they are not used by people under 18.

Cox said that if lottery officials are sincere when they say that the lottery's sole purpose is to raise money for college scholarships and that their goal is not to sell lottery tickets to every adult in the state, then they should have no problem with eliminating advertising.

"If they're all about providing money for scholarships, why not take that advertising money and pay for more scholarships to go to college?" he said.

Legislators who have worked on lottery-related issues said any proposal to ban lottery advertising isn't likely to get far.

"Banning all advertising is just crazy," said Rep. Barry Hyde, D-North Little Rock, co-chairman of the legislative committee that oversees the lottery.

Hyde said that without advertising, sales "would really suffer."

"That's something I don't think you're going to get any traction with," he said.

"It's kind of like selling anything else," said Sen. Mary Anne Salmon, D-North Little Rock, a member of the oversight committee. "If you don't let people know what's there, they don't buy, and if they don't buy, we don't have scholarship money."

Regarding the use of vending machines, Hyde said legislative researchers are conducting a study on that topic.

"Depending on that research, I think I'll move farther along on formulating an opinion on the vending machines," he said.

State Sen. Sue Madison, D-Fayetteville, who unsuccessfully pushed for an interim study on abolishing the lottery, said the Family Council's ideas are good ones. She said the state should not be in the business of encouraging people through advertising to gamble.

"We make money off of cigarettes, but we're not out there encouraging people to buy them," she said.

Asked if she would vote for the measures, Madison said, "I may file them myself."

She said she had not been contacted by the Family Council, however.

Hyde said he believes the Family Council is just trying to undermine the lottery, which he said is hard to understand. He noted that in 2008 Arkansans voted nearly 3-1 to approve a constitutional amendment to create a lottery to fund college scholarships.

"We're in the process of awarding some 25,000 to 30,000 scholarships," he said. "Many of those are going to people who without it would not have an opportunity to go to college and have an opportunity to advance themselves. I can't figure out why somebody would want to continue to try to undermine that success."

Cox said it isn't the scholarships the Family Council objects to, but that the money is being raised in a way the group believes is harmful to families.

"We're going to continue opposing the lottery because it's still bad. I think I would be irresponsible if I didn't do that," he said.

Arkansas News Bureau

Comments

Tnplayer805's avatarTnplayer805

Geez...  Give it up.  Students are going to college and bettering their lives.  To do away with games would be a major step back for Arkansas' students.

JimmySand9

Worried about underage players? I'm pretty sure they hate it just as much when adults play.

Spare Change

If people want to blow their money on lottery tickets that's their business.  Whatever happened to life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness in this country?  What is it with all these groups that think they know best and insist on forcing their beliefs on others?

tmead's avatartmead

This is the utmost form of bigotry and and intolerance. Do people really think it is their concern on how others spend their money?

sully16's avatarsully16

More goody do gooders telling people how to live their lives. The quickest way to shut them up is to throw their own dirty laundry back in their own faces.Evil Smile

MADDOG10's avatarMADDOG10

Sounds as though this group are a buch of hypocrites , they don't care about the scholarships, just how the money is raised?

Maybe they should pay for this themselves. Or, maybe LP should donate some tin cups to them...~ Or maybe yet they'll want to change the names of the bathrooms next to:   

      The watering hole, and the chocolate factory...

konane's avatarkonane

If memory serves Georgia had a similar minded group attempting to derail our lottery.  Georgia Lottery players were so happy to finally get a lottery everyone ignored them and kept on playing.  They eventually gave up.

barbos's avatarbarbos

  A group of smart individuals instead of playing lottery is simply asking for donations.  Unlike lottery jackpots those donations may not even be taxable.

diamondpalace's avatardiamondpalace

Underage drinking is more problematic than underage lottery players. LOL Focus your campaign against that, as much preventive there is kids will always find ways!

HaveABall's avatarHaveABall

So, not exactly a moral dilemma!  The younger than 18-year-old player would tell their eldest family member(s) about the winning ticket, the next day this family would place the UNSIGNED winning jackpot ticket into a new safety deposit box for 1.9 months, the family would immediately hire an incorporation lawyer to open a family member-only owned corporation or family remainder trust, 1.9 months later the family would file the claim and sign the back of the ticket using the existing corporation's/trust's name. 

That's one increasingly joyful family working, spending, and investing money together (safely and hopefully equally) -- honest part time daily work for each member of the family -- and not taking paying (or volunteer jobs that should pay at least minimum wage) jobs away from anybody who is desperate for the income.

Group Hug

Stack47

Quote: Originally posted by HaveABall on Jun 22, 2010

So, not exactly a moral dilemma!  The younger than 18-year-old player would tell their eldest family member(s) about the winning ticket, the next day this family would place the UNSIGNED winning jackpot ticket into a new safety deposit box for 1.9 months, the family would immediately hire an incorporation lawyer to open a family member-only owned corporation or family remainder trust, 1.9 months later the family would file the claim and sign the back of the ticket using the existing corporation's/trust's name. 

That's one increasingly joyful family working, spending, and investing money together (safely and hopefully equally) -- honest part time daily work for each member of the family -- and not taking paying (or volunteer jobs that should pay at least minimum wage) jobs away from anybody who is desperate for the income.

Group Hug

Or the eldest family member could simply sign the back of the ticket, have it validated, collect the winnings, and give the money to the younger.

Either way it's still illegal for anyone under 18 to buy a lottery ticket and offering scenarios of how they could collect the winnings just adds fuel for the group trying to undermine the lottery.

"That's one increasingly joyful family working, spending, and investing money together (safely and hopefully equally) -- honest part time daily work for each member of the family"

Sounds more like a mafia family where the younger members do all the illegal work and the elders benefit.

It's possible in any state lottery the underage might buy tickets just like it's possible the underage could buy alcohol, tobacco, or drive a car. The people of Arkansas voted to create a lottery and this group is just grasping at straws trying to get the most out of their five minutes of fame.

pumpi76

Quote: Originally posted by diamondpalace on Jun 21, 2010

Underage drinking is more problematic than underage lottery players. LOL Focus your campaign against that, as much preventive there is kids will always find ways!

i agree...well said...

plus i want to quote something:

¨The machines will check users' ID for their age, but "it's real simple for a 15-year-old to find an 18- or 19-year-old that will loan him a driver's license," Cox said.
Lottery officials have said the machines will be monitored to ensure that they are not used by people under 18.¨

It also, brings about teens geniuses....A teen can play all he/she want the question is can he win [not talking about pick3 and pick4]...The ones that do win like Pick5/39 or Pick5/35 must be geniuses or have: High I.Q...I know that 15 years ago a 14 year old if he/she had won on purpose the entire world would had thought...Is this the next: Antichrist...

i see it this way, if a bunch of college students began playing agaisnt the major leagues teams all the time it will mean they will get better....In sports is: ¨Who you train against that makes you brilliant...¨

people dont see all that stuff....But i wish the lottery cost 25 cents...Teens dont have jobs and even if they did they dont get paid like adults....

pumpi76

Quote: Originally posted by pumpi76 on Jun 23, 2010

i agree...well said...

plus i want to quote something:

¨The machines will check users' ID for their age, but "it's real simple for a 15-year-old to find an 18- or 19-year-old that will loan him a driver's license," Cox said.
Lottery officials have said the machines will be monitored to ensure that they are not used by people under 18.¨

It also, brings about teens geniuses....A teen can play all he/she want the question is can he win [not talking about pick3 and pick4]...The ones that do win like Pick5/39 or Pick5/35 must be geniuses or have: High I.Q...I know that 15 years ago a 14 year old if he/she had won on purpose the entire world would had thought...Is this the next: Antichrist...

i see it this way, if a bunch of college students began playing agaisnt the major leagues teams all the time it will mean they will get better....In sports is: ¨Who you train against that makes you brilliant...¨

people dont see all that stuff....But i wish the lottery cost 25 cents...Teens dont have jobs and even if they did they dont get paid like adults....

not just that: WE DONT LIVE IN HEAVEN OR PARADISE...Have you seen the EARTH FLOATING in SPACE surrounded by never mind i dont even want to COUNT the amount of stars....

We need teens and kids as SMART AS WE CAN GET THEM.....AS SMART AS WE CAN GET THEM...

the only problem is making sure they have a good and evil and christian concept...Because someone TOO SMART with no breaks and doing evil you can imagine....

REST OF THE WORLD ARE YOU LISTENING...

not just that, evil exist and good has to be 2 or 3 steps ahead of evil all the time and not the other way around...

rdgrnr's avatarrdgrnr

I predict this whole brouhaha will die down when the leader of the movement opposing the lottery on moral grounds is caught having sex with a turnip. On video.

It never fails.

He'll then have to do the requisite public apology on TV as he explains: "Mistakes were made."

His wife will be at his side.

God, I hope he doesn't bring the turnip.

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