Arizona Lottery: Voting for dollars?
Doing your civic duty could become much more lucrative under an initiative filed Wednesday that seeks to turn Arizona elections into a statewide game of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"
The initiative, filed by former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Osterloh of Tucson, would reward one lucky voter with $1 million from the State Lottery every two years.
"We're rewarding patriotism,"said Osterloh, who's aiming for the November 2004 ballot.
"The idea behind this is to increase voter participation from well below 50 percent to above 90 percent."
Osterloh's group, Arizonans for Voter Rewards and Education Funding, also filed a second initiative that would force the Legislature to pour nearly $2 billion more into the public school system to bring per-pupil education spending up to the national average. Arizona ranked 49th in spending in the most recent Education Week "Quality Counts" ranking at $5,487 per pupil.