Tennessee Lottery Mistakes Make Players Question State Integrity

Lottery's are a great way to create financial opportunity for individual states, but when mistakes are continually made, the integrity of the lottery could be at stake.

In Tennessee, there have been three mistakes made by the state lottery, with the latest one costing the state an estimated $25,000.

About a month ago the state made the switch from the old fashioned white pop up balls, to computer generated drawings. A programming error in the change over prevented some numbers from being drawn. The state gave refunds to anyone that contained those numbers on their tickets.

A couple of weeks after that occurred, there was a misprint on some tickets that claimed the payout for the Powerball game was at $29 million, when in fact, it was only $15 million. Players then complained that they would not have spent as much money on the game had they known the payout was smaller than the tickets claimed. Again, refunds were given by the state.

On Monday, the latest of these mistakes happened. A employee for the Tennessee lottery accidentally pushed a button while testing the system that actually sent winning numbers to television stations. The actual numbers that were drawn live were not released. The state, once again had to pay out extra money, as they paid both sets of numbers that were released.

It is now time for officials in Tennessee to correct and prevent any future gaffes before people lose interest in the lottery due to lack of credibility.

September 23, 2007
Posted By Larry Rutherford
Staff Editor, CasinoGamblingWeb.com
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