Official lottery, also known as a state lottery, is a form of gambling for a prize determined by chance. Lotteries are typically conducted by states, although they can also be run at the federal level. A prize can be anything from cash to goods or services. The proceeds from a lottery are used to help fund state programs, including education.
Lottery winners can only claim a jackpot or annuity if they are a resident of the state in which they play, according to Pennsylvania law. However, they can share a prize from a multi-state game like Powerball or Mega Millions with other residents of the same state, or in another state that participates in the same pool.
The author of this article notes that the modern lottery began to be promoted in the nineteen-sixties, when state budget crises made it impossible to float a state’s entire government without raising taxes or cutting services, both options unpopular with voters. The lottery, as a solution that would neither raise nor cut taxes, found wide appeal in America.
As soon as one state legalizes a lottery, Matheson says, “it’s quite common for the states around it to follow suit pretty quickly.” But there is also a geographic pattern, he adds. “Once a country has a lottery, it tends to spread in a similar way that other forms of gambling do.” It’s just that there are more ways to be scammed. For example, phishing scammers have been targeting users with an email that seems to come from the National Lottery Commission’s chief executive. These emails include a link to an alleged official website registered on.org, but they actually redirect to a Yahoo address.