Sunday 26 June 2016

Hoosier Lottery

The Hoosier Lottery is the official state lottery of Indiana, and is the only US lottery that uses the state's nickname as its official name. It is a member of the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL). The Hoosier Lottery sells scratch tickets; its drawing games include Mega Millions, Hoosier Lotto, Powerball, Cash 5, and Poker Lotto.

The Hoosier Lottery is based in the state capital of Indianapolis, with regional offices in South Bend and Evansville.

Indiana was among those states participating in the short-lived multi-state draw game Monopoly Millionaires' Club from October 19 to December 26, 2014.

The 1840s and 1850s saw a general movement against lotteries in the United States, partly on moral grounds, and partly due to a backlash against legislative corruption. The Indiana constitutional convention of 1851 adopted, with little debate, a clause that "no lottery shall be authorized; nor shall the sale of lottery tickets be allowed".

Vincennes University moved to revive its lottery in 1879, arguing successfully in a test case before the Indiana Supreme Court that, under the Contracts Clause, the lottery provision of the 1807 charter could not be revoked, even by a constitutional ban. The U.S. Supreme Court soon rejected a similar argument in Stone v. Mississippi, but Vincennes was able to run its lottery as a policy game, contracted out to a group of experienced lottery operators from Kentucky, for over a year before it was ruled unlawful in 1883.

In 1988, state voters approved by 62 percent a constitutional amendment lifting the ban.Indiana legislators authorized the state lottery, along with parimutuel betting on horse racing, in May 1989. The first scratch-off game, Hoosier Millionaire, went on sale in October. Lotto Cash, the first online game, began in April 1990.

The drawing on November 7, 2007 had a jackpot of $54.5 million, its largest jackpot ever. Retired steel worker Peter Gilbert of East Chicago, Indiana chose the cash option of $40.4 million rather than the 30 annual payments . There were no jackpot winners since October 21, 2006, so the grand prize broke its previous jackpot record of $42 million set June 5, 1999.

No comments: