Illinois General Assembly - Full Text of HJR0026

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Full Text of HJR0026 100th General Assembly

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HJ0026 100TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HJ0026 LRB100 10523 MST 20739 r

1 HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION

2     WHEREAS, The Illinois State Lottery, its private-sector
3 affiliate, Northstar Lottery Group, and its retail partners
4 offer a wide variety of lottery games of chance to Illinois
5 residents, including a family of ticket games called
6 "scratch-offs"; scratch-off tickets are sold one-by-one from
7 rolls of tickets offered for sale at a retailer; and

8     WHEREAS, Recent investigative journalism has uncovered
9 that many rolls of scratch-off lottery tickets are withdrawn
10 from sale in Illinois long before all of the prizes printed on
11 the tickets have been awarded; this conduct is defended on the
12 grounds that what is being sold is not a pile of prizes, but a
13 series of tickets each of which offer a mathematical chance to
14 win one prize, and if the mathematical odds are maintained for
15 each individual ticket then there is no harm and no foul in
16 playing games with the pile; and

17     WHEREAS, The probity of this argument depends upon the
18 accuracy of the assertion that the mathematical chance for one
19 scratch-off ticket to win one prize is maintained, and there is
20 some skepticism on this point; therefore, be it

21     RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE
22 HUNDREDTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, THE SENATE

HJ0026 - 2 - LRB100 10523 MST 20739 r

1 CONCURRING HEREIN, that we request the Auditor General to
2 conduct an audit of the scratch-off games sold by the Illinois
3 State Lottery and its private affiliate, the Northstar Lottery
4 Group; and be it further

5     RESOLVED, That the audit shall include an investigation
6 into whether or not the act of withdrawing unsold rolls of
7 scratch-off Lottery tickets from sale in Illinois, prior to the
8 sale of all of the printed tickets, alters the mathematical
9 odds of a single ticket buyer buying purchasing a winning
10 ticket; and be it further

11     RESOLVED, That the Auditor General shall report the
12 findings of this investigation to the Governor of Illinois, the
13 Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, and the
14 President of the Illinois Senate, no later than January 31,
15 2018.

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