Editor: The following letter appeared in the News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.) this morning, November 23, 2005. The Lottery Post staff urges other North Carolina residents to do as this bright woman did, and speak out on this important issue. Don't sit back and risk the possibility that your state will use a computer instead of real lottery drawings!
I'm very happy that North Carolina has joined the rest of the East Coast in adopting a state lottery, and I'm excited to start playing. However, as someone who has a keen interest in lottery games, I am aware of an important issue that most people don't know about.
Several state lotteries, mostly in the West, have gotten rid of lottery drawing machines and replaced them with computerized drawings. That means that instead of players being able to see a fair lottery drawing, where numbered balls are drawn from a tumbling drum or some similar system, a computer is programmed to select the numbers using a "Random Number Generator" and players don't have a chance to witness the numbers being selected on live TV.
The states with computerized drawings try to convince the public that they are a way to have fair drawings while lowering operating costs. Hogwash! With computerized drawings, there will always be a suspicion about validity and fairness. Who knows what's actually going on inside the computer, or if some hacker has managed to get around the computerized security?
This issue is especially important to North Carolina residents because our new executive lottery director, Tom Shaheen, instituted computerized drawings in New Mexico, where he has been lottery director. We want real drawings in North Carolina; do not bring computerized drawings to our state.
Janet Austin
Charlotte
Amen!
The NY King Kong Millions online game will be drawn by computer. It can be rigged so that a "26 annual payments" ticket wins.
I agree- way too much suspicion with the RNG
WTG Janet, that's what I would call "getting involved". Every resident of NC should do the same. Let your voices be heard!!!!
Carbob
I suspect demographic bias in my (RNG) state lottery - I've noticed suspicious patterns. Maybe it's me.
you very well might've just saved NC from RNG HELL......good luck,lets spread the word.....
They better start a letter writing campaign before the "director" makes the purchase...otherwise, its all over. Michigan has rng for everything but the 3 and 4 digits....the number game is their cash cow and I think they would be scared to death to change to the RNG type drawings for fear of out right revolt, therefore they resort to changing the ball sets EVERY drawing.....better that than the RNG tho....To me you have a better chance at winning on an instant ticket than any thing that is RNG generated, that is why I rarely play anything other than the 3 and 4 pick games and the mega-millions.... at least those 3 drawings are live?
Double amen to that. You go Girl...!
The NY King Kong Millions online game will be drawn by computer. It can be rigged so that a "26 annual payments" ticket wins.
How would the lottery benefit from rigging the drawing so that happens?
Awesome!!! Well done!! You go girl!!
The NY King Kong Millions online game will be drawn by computer. It can be rigged so that a "26 annual payments" ticket wins.
How would the lottery benefit from rigging the drawing so that happens?
The NY Lottery itself does NOT benefit whenever a winner receives annuity payments. If anything, it creates more overhead. The real winner in this case is the company that would sell the annuity to the lottery.
They better start a letter writing campaign before the "director" makes the purchase...otherwise, its all over. Michigan has rng for everything but the 3 and 4 digits....the number game is their cash cow and I think they would be scared to death to change to the RNG type drawings for fear of out right revolt, therefore they resort to changing the ball sets EVERY drawing.....better that than the RNG tho....To me you have a better chance at winning on an instant ticket than any thing that is RNG generated, that is why I rarely play anything other than the 3 and 4 pick games and the mega-millions.... at least those 3 drawings are live?
Are you certain MI uses balls for Pick 3 and Pick 4? I've been operating/playing under incorrect notions then...I had thought that MI was using RNG for all of their drawings. I pretty much had stayed clear of MI for that reason on P3 and P4.
In the end though, I guess its not so much whether one can find "trends" in RNG games (seems like they show there as much as in the manual games) but its the potential for abuse/rigging that the game operators have at their disposal that is the problem. Lottery Commissions are basically government, and since government has made themselves a track record of being untrustworthy and sneaky over the years, is it any wonder that so many of us view them with high suspicion on everything they do?
I know I trust government about as far as I could toss a horse !
another reason i hate computerized drawings is at the end of the day for all we know they could just get the computer to choose the number that was bet on the least by players then they would maximize and make most of the money back the players spent in the first place......