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1
HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, The Illinois State Lottery, its private-sector
3affiliate, Northstar Lottery Group, and its retail partners
4offer a wide variety of lottery games of chance to Illinois
5residents, including a family of ticket games called
6"scratch-offs"; scratch-off tickets are sold one-by-one from
7rolls of tickets offered for sale at a retailer; and
 
8    WHEREAS, Recent investigative journalism has uncovered
9that many rolls of scratch-off lottery tickets are withdrawn
10from sale in Illinois long before all of the prizes printed on
11the tickets have been awarded; this conduct is defended on the
12grounds that what is being sold is not a pile of prizes, but a
13series of tickets each of which offer a mathematical chance to
14win one prize, and if the mathematical odds are maintained for
15each individual ticket then there is no harm and no foul in
16playing games with the pile; and
 
17    WHEREAS, The probity of this argument depends upon the
18accuracy of the assertion that the mathematical chance for one
19scratch-off ticket to win one prize is maintained, and there is
20some skepticism on this point; therefore, be it
 
21    RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE
22HUNDREDTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, THE SENATE

 

 

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1CONCURRING HEREIN, that we request the Auditor General to
2conduct an audit of the scratch-off games sold by the Illinois
3State Lottery and its private affiliate, the Northstar Lottery
4Group; and be it further
 
5    RESOLVED, That the audit shall include an investigation
6into whether or not the act of withdrawing unsold rolls of
7scratch-off Lottery tickets from sale in Illinois, prior to the
8sale of all of the printed tickets, alters the mathematical
9odds of a single ticket buyer buying purchasing a winning
10ticket; and be it further
 
11    RESOLVED, That the Auditor General shall report the
12findings of this investigation to the Governor of Illinois, the
13Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, and the
14President of the Illinois Senate, no later than January 31,
152018.