The Washington State Lottery has a new program for the loseriest of its losers -- scratch ticket losers can MAIL the losing tickets back to the lottery where they are placed in a drawing of losers for $500. Scratch and snail.
If you spend $1.00 (or $2 or $5 or $10 or $20) for a scratch ticket and your ticket is a loser (chances are quite high of this) then you can spend $0.44 for the stamp and $0.12 for the envelope for the slightly lower chance of winning the $500! Of for an additional 44 cents, you could just buy another lottery ticket (or a banana.) Turns out the statistics support simply buying a new ticket!
We dont play the lottery but we can understand why people might buy a ticket (we dont understand more than one) and we appreciate the revenue it brings to the State.
But does scratch and snail make any sense at all? What are the administrative costs of OPENING MAIL, sorting out "qualifying" loser tickets, making and managing a list of losers who mailed their losers, then holding the drawings, alerting the losers that they're winners? Seems like a lot more administrative costs than running an ordinary turnkey scratch game.
Maybe the next WA Lottery promotion could eliminate the middleman altogether: "Take your lottery money and put it in the bank. Then vote yes on your next school levy. Then take the saved money and send it to the government in exchange for the better schools. You keep the interest. Everyone wins!" No mail opening, loser-sorting administrators (or scratch-tickets) needed.
Woo, what a hoot. Too bad most people won't see the logic of just buying another ticket. Saving the money and investing in schools will yield better educated citizens, but wouldn't the lottery system go bankrupt?
Posted by: Millie | 06/02/2010 at 15:13