Is the Lottery Rigged?

Millions of people dream about it--some spend their hard-earned dollars every week on it. What is it? The lottery. It seems like no matter where in the world you live, a lottery exists. But, what are the odds of actually winning?

Some bloggers/reporters believe that the lottery is rigged as reported at http://www.uncoveror.com/lottery.htm:

You may have heard that you are more likely to be hit on the head by a meteorite than to win the lottery. This is certainly so. Assuming that the game is honest, the odds are roughly one in several hundred million. Even with these odds, lottery commissions are not satisfied. The lottery is rigged.

The giant multi-state and individual state lotteries are more fixed than pro wrestling. The jackpots go up and up, with no winners. People get lottery fever. Millions nationwide are willing to wait in a line just like the ones for bread in the former Soviet Union for the pipe dream of striking it rich. The rigging works like this: super computers keep track of each combination sold, and then the ping-pong balls are weighted to assure that a losing combination comes up. On rare occasions, all possible combinations are sold, and they must let someone win. Only then is the game honest.

Why? The lottery, which is a state-run version of the Mafia's numbers racket, is a great money grab scam, as long as it brings in more than it pays out. In the past, lotteries were abolished because they lost money.

The worst part of this is whom it hurts. The poor and desperate are the most common victims of lottery fever. Children go hungry and senior citizens go without their medication because of it. People prone to gambling addiction also blow huge sums.

We spoke with an employee at a state lottery agency. We can not reveal his name or even which state, as some of the same gangsters who ran the numbers racket now run the lottery, and they would kill him.

"Yes, I personally am involved in it. Lottery ping-pong balls have a small valve, like a basketball or soccer ball, only it's very tiny, and nearly invisible. We use a hypodermic needle to inject heavier-than-air gasses such as radon into the balls we don't want to come up. At first, we tried helium in the ones we did want to rise, but they jumped up so quickly that it was obvious. Lotteries are raking in much more than if the games were honest, and people don't know they have literally no chance!"

"If you think about it logically, you certainly don't play anyway. You are betting that you can predict which six of 45 or more balls are going to come out of the hopper. In some games, the order even matters! It's a sucker's bet, and that's when it's honest! Most drawings are rigged, making the odds zero in infinity! The lottery is not only a tax on people who don't understand math; it is an unfair and unjust tax. Didn't we have the American Revolution over taxes like that?"

Because of the massive payoff for a successful cheat (especially after the 1980 Pennsylvania Lottery scandal where drawing balls were rigged to draw a certain number of results), lottery machines are subject to strict security measures. In some cases there are several machines and several sets of balls, and the combination to be used is selected at random just before the draw. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery_machine)

It seems odd that certain numbers come up as winners. For instance, in Illinois a couple of years ago, a self-proclaimed witch owned the winning number--drawn on Halloween. She planned to use the money to start a school for witches. Another Illinois winning ticket--911--won on September 11, a couple of years after the terrorist attack on the United States, termed 911.

So, what do you think? Is the lottery rigged? Do you, personally know anyone who has ever won the lottery? The only person I know won a million dollars through a scratch-off ticket, bought out of a machine.