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BY TOM HESTER SR.
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
With many New Jerseyans daydreaming of going from rags to riches by winning the $237 million Mega Millions' lottery jackpot Friday night, three Assemblymembers Thursday reminded residents they are trying to prohibit the sale of lottery scratch-off tickets after the top prizes have been won.
The bill sponsored by Paul D. Moriarty (D-Gloucester), John J. Burzichelli (D-Gloucester) and Annette Quijano (D-Union) has been approved by the Assembly and is pending in the Senate.
"It is patently unfair for a lottery game to have tickets available for sale with no chance of winning the top prizes because they already have been claimed," Moriarty said. "If the lottery were being run in this way by a private organization, it's a fair bet that legal action would already have been pursued. The playing field needs to be leveled."
Under the bill (A-647), the state Lottery Commission would be required to notify lottery sellers when the top prize or prizes for a particular lottery scratch-off game have been claimed. At that point, the sellers would be required to stop selling the remainder of the tickets in their possession and would return the tickets to the state to be destroyed. The sponsors noted their legislation is codifying a practice already employed by the commission.A lottery agent in Flemington, for example, is offering over 30 different scratch-off games. A clerk in the agent's deli did not know which games were new. Throughout the state, scratch-off games are especially popular with low-income residents and immigrants attempting to win a big payoff.
"Playing the lottery is always a gamble, doubly so when it comes to scratch off tickets with a single big prize in the offering that may or may not be available," Burzichelli said. "This would take the guesswork out of the equation and help ensure that anyone who chooses to play has a chance to play for the top prize."
"This legislation would restore a fundamental fairness to New Jersey's lottery scratch-off games," Quijano said. "Scratch-off players shouldn't have to gamble on whether there's even a top prize to win when they choose to play."
The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot is 1 in 176 million but in the Tuesday drawing, two unidentified New Jerseyans were among 14 players in nine states to win $250,000 each.
With nine different ways to win, a total of 1,545,752 tickets from coast to coast were winners in the drawing. The odds of winning any of the Mega Millions prizes are approximately 1 in 40. Three tickets used the Megaplier to win $1 million. Those tickets were bought in Arkansas, Texas and Vermont.
This jackpot has been growing since Nov. 9, when Mega Millions had its most recent jackpot winner. The jackpot has since rolled 14 times without a winner. The odds of winning the jackpot are approximately one in 176 million.
