Throughout history, many nations and cultures have used a random draw to select political positions. But an Arizona proposal could go one step further, merging voting with the lottery. From the NY Times:
To anyone who ever said, “I wouldn’t vote for that bum for a million bucks,†Arizona may be calling your bluff.
A proposal to award $1 million in every general election to one lucky resident, chosen by lottery, simply for voting — no matter for whom — has qualified for the November ballot.
Mark Osterloh, a political gadfly who is behind the initiative, the Arizona Voter Reward Act, is promoting it with the slogan, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Vote!†He collected 185,902 signatures of registered voters, far more than the 122,612 required, and last week the secretary of state certified the measure for the ballot this fall.
If the general election in 2004 is a guide, when more than 2 million people voted, the 1-in-2-million odds of winning the election lottery would be far better than the Powerball jackpot (currently about 1 in 146,107,962) but not nearly as great as dying from a lightning strike (1 in 55,928).
“People buy a lot of lottery tickets now,†Mr. Osterloh said, “and the odds of winning this are much, much higher.†(And most of the time there is not much lightning in Arizona.)
If some see the erosion of democracy in putting voting on the same plane as a scratch-and-win game — and some do — Mr. Osterloh sees the gimmick as the linchpin to improve voter turnout and get more people interested in politics.
…
Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate in Washington, said the idea of a voter lottery had come up in other states, but he could not recall any moving forward with it. And he’s glad.“People should not go vote because they might win a lottery,†Mr. Gans said. “We need to rekindle the religion of civic duty, and that is a hard job, but we should not make voting crassly commercial.â€
Editorial writers, bloggers and others have panned the idea as bribery and say it may draw people simply trying to cash in without studying candidates or issues.
“Bribing people to vote is a superficial approach that will have no beneficial outcome to the process, except to make some people feel good that the turnout numbers are higher,†said an editorial in The Yuma Sun. “But higher numbers do not necessarily mean a better outcome.â€
The initiative calls for financing the award through unclaimed state lottery prize money, private donations and, if need be, state money. A spokeswoman for the Arizona Lottery Commission said its unclaimed prize pot fluctuated greatly, but it now stood at more than $1 million.
Mr. Osterloh said private donors could add their own incentives, like a car dealership offering a new car to a random voter.
…“It’s clearly illegal,†said Jack Chin, a professor at the University of Arizona law school who has studied voting rights issues.
“This is cute and clever, but even though it responds to a real problem, it does so in a way that threatens to degrade the process,†Mr. Chin said.
Sitting in Las Vegas, all I can say is: “Gambling? Degrade the process? What’s that’s supposed to mean?”