Official Lottery is an easy informative lottery app. It tells you how to play, where to buy tickets and if you won! I like the UI and features. However when it comes time to scan a ticket it takes way too long! Normally I can read the barcode of a winning ticket in seconds or less. This app makes it incredibly frustrating to try and get the scanner to work. It took me 100 attempts before the ticket finally scanned and it was a loser ticket. The scanning speed should be at least 1/20th of the time of buying a ticket. Otherwise the app is great!

When the first legal lotteries launched in America, their proponents claimed that they would fill state coffers without raising taxes. But that turned out to be false; after a year or so, the proceeds from the games were only about two per cent of state spending. When these figures became clear, advocates of the games shifted tactics. Rather than trying to sell the idea that a lottery was a magic bullet that would float all of state business, they began arguing that it would cover a single line item—usually education but sometimes veterans’ services or public parks—and that voting for it was a vote for these specific benefits. This approach was ingenious because it obscured the games’ regressivity and made them seem less like gambling and more like public service. But it was also a dangerous deception.