By Todd Northrop
One of the most hotly-anticipated lottery drawings of all time never happened Monday night, as lottery officials were scrambling to process the massive amount of ticket sales data generated by the record $1.9 billion jackpot.
Officials now estimate that the drawing should kick off sometime Tuesday morning. A specific time has not been set.
The delay was initially caused by one participating lottery that needed extra time to complete required security protocols, the California Lottery said.
Later, the Multi-State Lottery Association released a statement explaining that one participating lottery needed more time to process its sales and play data.
The organization explained that all 48 participating lotteries are required to submit their sales and plays before the winning numbers can be selected.
"Powerball has stringent security requirements to protect the integrity of the game and remains committed to holding a drawing that gives all players a fair chance to win," the statement said.
"Due to the length of the draw delay, it is likely that we will not know the official results of the Powerball drawing until Tuesday morning," it continued.
People across the United States have been scooping up lottery tickets at a frantic pace ever since nobody won Saturday night's $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot.
There have now been 40 drawings since Aug. 6 without a top prize winner, generating a jackpot larger than any other seen in world history.
If nobody wins the current $1.9 billion Powerball jackpot, the next jackpot will be $2.3 billion, according to the Texas Lottery.
Players will be able to find the winning numbers at both USA Mega, as well as on Lottery Post, on the players' state lottery results page.
The winning numbers will be published immediately after the delayed drawing takes place.
THE LOTTERY IS ALWAYS RIGGED ( They Select The Winning Combination) WHETHER THEY USE A Lottery Draw Machine OR COMPUTERIZED LOTTERY DRAWINGS.
The Lottery Needed More Time To Pick The Winning Combination.
victims of thar respective greed ..... well good luck and shame on them
Read the article again.
For some unknown reason the suspect state has not been mentioned...could be one of the territory's (PR & VI) but think not.
Sweet, now I can buy more tickets lol
Where are the Powerball numbers, it's Tuesday morning????
Not drawn yet. After this election stuff, GMA will have a story on it.
Hold onto your tickets!
This sounds sus.
Valid point. Got a knot in my stomach at the possible shenanigans being perpetrated by the unnamed lottery participant/state/territory . Wonder how many "test" drawings they will perform?
But isn't there usually a slight adjustment to the final jp total when it is unusually large? After the numbers are drawn.
I bet it is a very large state that delayed the drawing..
I give up
a state cldn't stand losing
NY, or NJ
what if nobody won?
Lol, and they say is not rigged . They are working on which combinations to drop. Do you think they will hand a billion dollars to some peasant, I don't think so.
powerball seems to pull this stunt about delaying drawings
Sounds to me like California is the state that may have had technical problems and could not process security protocols.
As a retired data processing professional (I worked for IBM for 32 years in an IT department located inside of one of IBM's largest datacenters containing every type/kind of computer hardware that had software executing on them from PC's to mainframes) I'm NOT surprised that a computer could be overwhelmed and crash due the volume of data to be processed. Add to that that we neither know the age of nor the stability of both the hardware and software running on any machine that may have failed. Nothing says that the computers any states lottery has in running their datacenter is state of the art. It's very common for up and running hardware/software to be old and way out of date and long overdue for replacement. Should they replace it? Of course they should! But then the dollars budgeted to do that may not even exist.
Add to that, if it actually is California that has the problem, California is the most populated state in The United States and sells more lottery tickets than any other state in a "normal" drawing. G5
What time is the drawing?
I guess the realized they drew my numbers -- and said OOPS--no way! Good luck to all!