Arizona Ballot Could Become Lottery Ticket

[n2doc]

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: July 17, 2006
TUCSON, July 13 — To anyone who ever said, “I wouldn’t vote for that bum for a million bucks,” Arizona may be calling your bluff.

A proposal to award $1 million in every general election to one lucky resident, chosen by lottery, simply for voting — no matter for whom — has qualified for the November ballot.

Mark Osterloh, a political gadfly who is behind the initiative, the Arizona Voter Reward Act, is promoting it with the slogan, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Vote!” He collected 185,902 signatures of registered voters, far more than the 122,612 required, and last week the secretary of state certified the measure for the ballot this fall.

If the general election in 2004 is a guide, when more than 2 million people voted, the 1-in-2-million odds of winning the election lottery would be far better than the Powerball jackpot (currently about 1 in 146,107,962) but not nearly as great as dying from a lightning strike (1 in 55,928).

“People buy a lot of lottery tickets now,” Mr. Osterloh said, “and the odds of winning this are much, much higher.” (And most of the time there is not much lightning in Arizona.)

more (reg required):
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/17/us/17voter.html?hp&ex=1153108800&en=df8b6b13ddf6f09e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Nevernose]

1. Sick, twisted, & brilliant (and I've been struck by lightning. Twice.)

Of course, this means that even stupid people will vote, and I think I'd rather have a smart person MAYBE voting for a Republican than a stupid person DEFINITELY voting for one.

[DaveinMD]

2. lots of poor people buy lottery tickets

those should be our voters.

[Nevernose]

6. "Should be" and "are" are entirely different discussions

Otherwise, why would poor whites in the South ever vote Republican? Democrats represent them on 99% of issues, yet they're still afraid that Kerry will take away their guns or hand us over to Al Qaeda...

[DaveinMD]

11. the south

is a different socialogical phenomenon. We are making great strides out west.

[Skink]

3. What if they have to use Diebold?

[SammyBlue]

4. Not if I have a say in it. . .which I do! That will hopefully go down as

fast as the ban on gay marriage shit.

[n2doc]

7. I can understand not wanting more repuke voters

But isn't one of the things that separates the Republican and Democratic parties the idea of who should vote? I always thought that Dems wanted more voters, while Repukes always wanted to make the voting process harder, so that only a select few would be able to vote. This seems like it would fall into a category that Dems would support.:shrug:

[SammyBlue]

10. Civic duty shouldn't be giving a lottery number.

[City Lights]

5. Leave it to Arizona!

:eyes:

Glad I'm no longer living there...

[midnight]

8. Hi No Surrender.

I also lived in Arizona. I heard that the Gov. is a Demorate, but don't know much more than that. I just wanted to say that your cat was very cute. Sorry about your loss.

[City Lights]

9. Hi, midnight.

AZ's governor is Janet Napolitano, and yes, she's a Democrat! I like her, as do some of my conservative friends still living there.

Thanks for your kind comments about my furboy. :hi:

P.S. My sister has a cat named Midnight. :-)