The idea is that if you vote, you get one lottery ticket for a 1m$
drawing after the election. It'd increase voter turnout, and doesn't
cost the taxpayers, as the money comes from unclaimed lottery tickets.
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Arizona Ballot Could Become Lottery Ticket
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Correction Appended
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.)
If some see the erosion of democracy in putting voting on the same plane
as a scratch-and-win game — and some do — Mr. Osterloh sees the gimmick
as the linchpin to improve voter turnout and get more people interested
in politics.
In 2004, the year of a heated presidential election, 77 percent of
registered voters cast ballots in Arizona, but in 2002 — the year Mr.
Osterloh, a Democrat, ran for governor in what might politely be called
a dark-horse campaign — it was 56 percent. Primary election turnouts are
much lower.
About 60 percent of the voting-age population is registered, though that
includes people who are ineligible to vote, like illegal immigrants and
felons.
“Basically our government is elected by a small minority of citizens,”
said Mr. Osterloh, 53, a semiretired ophthalmologist who has helped
write and campaign for various successful ballot initiatives.
Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American
Electorate in Washington, said the idea of a voter lottery had come up
in other states, but he could not recall any moving forward with it. And
he’s glad.
“People should not go vote because they might win a lottery,” Mr. Gans
said. “We need to rekindle the religion of civic duty, and that is a
hard job, but we should not make voting crassly commercial.”
Editorial writers, bloggers and others have panned the idea as bribery
and say it may draw people simply trying to cash in without studying
candidates or issues.
“Bribing people to vote is a superficial approach that will have no
beneficial outcome to the process, except to make some people feel good
that the turnout numbers are higher,” said an editorial in The Yuma Sun.
“But higher numbers do not necessarily mean a better outcome.”
The initiative calls for financing the award through unclaimed state
lottery prize money, private donations and, if need be, state money. A
spokeswoman for the Arizona Lottery Commission said its unclaimed prize
pot fluctuated greatly, but it now stood at more than $1 million.
Mr. Osterloh said private donors could add their own incentives, like a
car dealership offering a new car to a random voter.
But he may be getting ahead of himself. There is the not-so-small matter
of whether such a voter lottery is legal.
Passage of the initiative would supersede a state law barring any
exchange of a vote for money, legal experts agreed, but whether it would
get around similar federal laws was a matter of debate.
One federal statute calls for fines or imprisonment of up to one year to
anyone who “makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either
to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate;
and whoever solicits, accepts, or receives any such expenditure in
consideration of his vote or the withholding of his vote.”
“It’s clearly illegal,” said Jack Chin, a professor at the University of
Arizona law school who has studied voting rights issues.
“This is cute and clever, but even though it responds to a real problem,
it does so in a way that threatens to degrade the process,” Mr. Chin said.
But Mr. Osterloh, who has a law degree, and the lawyer who helped write
the initiative, Anthony B. Ching, a former state solicitor general, said
the laws were meant to stop individuals from buying or selling votes for
particular candidates or parties. In this case, it would be a
state-sanctioned program with a high purpose and, they add, offering the
chance to win — voters opt into the program — was not the same as giving
everybody money to vote.
“I don’t think the federal law would cover this kind of situation,” Mr.
Ching said.
State political leaders so far are keeping their distance.
Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat who will also be on the November
ballot as a candidate for reelection, has declined to take a position.
The leaders of the State Senate and House, both Republicans, did not
answer messages seeking comment.
But Mr. Osterloh presses on. He predicted the idea would spread to the
two dozen states that allow citizen ballot initiatives if it was
successful here.
The local chapter of We Are America, a group seeking to register Latinos
to vote after large pro-immigration demonstrations last spring, plans to
promote the initiative in its voter education and registration drives.
“We’ve certainly tried everything else, and people don’t seem to turn
out,” said Roberto Reveles, president of the group.
And some voters are giving it serious thought.
“I’m pretty up on the issues, so I don’t need it,” said Beverly Winn, a
grocery store clerk here. “But who wouldn’t take money if they offer it?”
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