http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50640
July 19, 2006 | Issue 42.29
Scratch 'N Win Ballots To Debut In November
WASHINGTON, DC-In an effort to increase voter
participation while
generating
additional revenue, several state election boards
announced plans Monday
to
introduce new Scratch 'N Win ballots in November,
giving citizens the
chance
to win the right to vote in the 2006 elections.
The ballots, which will retail for $1 and go on
sale the morning of Nov.
7,
are small three- by two-inch cards with a "prize
area" obscured by a thin
silver coating. Voters will scratch off this area
and can win by matching
three vote amounts, which will range from one to 1
million.
If the voter scratches off the "wild card"
symbol-an elephant
silhouette-they instantly win 10,000 votes for
their state's Republican
candidate.
"These new ballots will appeal to groups that
don't ordinarily get to the
polls, such as our disabled and lower-income
citizens," said Gloria
Weinstein, chairman of California's Board of
Elections. "All you need is a
dollar and a dream, and your voice may finally be
heard."
"You can't vote if you don't play!" Weinstein
added.
If the state trials are successful, a nationwide
Powerballot drawing will
be
held for the 2008 presidential elections. The
grand prize will be 250
million votes.
Nevada has been using this system since the 2000
elections with mixed
results. That year, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV)
defeated his Democratic
opponent
by over 30 million votes, a result he called "an
amazing stroke of luck."
While the Scratch 'N Win ballots have produced
several heartwarming
stories
of big vote-winners, Boston University
political-science professor Paul
Sherwood claims that many who have won hundreds
and even thousands of
votes
"just end up wasting them."
"People always say that if they win a lot of
votes, they're going to use
them for a good cause, or share them with others,"
Sherwood said. "But in
many cases, they blow them all impetuously on
something like the
county-coroner election."
"In one particularly sad instance, a man from
Carson City used all 420,000
of his votes to elect himself Elko County sheriff,
a position from which
he
resigned two weeks later to resume his job as a
car salesman," Sherwood
added.
The scratch-off voting system has worked well
since its initiation, though
naturally there have been some complications. In
2002, election results
had
to be overturned in December when an unidentified
man with a decisive
750,000 votes found his unscratched, unredeemed
ballot underneath a pile
of
change on his dresser.
Sherwood cited several other cases of Scratch 'N
Win voting mishaps,
including hundreds of ballots that had not been
scratched all the way
through and could not be read by the electronic
vote-counting machines in
convenience stores across the state; a Reno man
who requested a lump sum
of
votes after winning the full million, only to have
nearly half of them
taken
out in poll taxes; and a group of four friends who
pooled their money to
buy
100 ballots and won a total of 3,200 votes, but
could not agree on a
candidate.
Despite the risks and challenges presented by
changing over to Scratch 'N
Win voting, Nevada Board of Elections chairman
Mark Hossler said there are
many distinct benefits to these point-of-purchase
polls.
"Our research shows that citizens over the age of
55 had traditionally
found
our ballots confusing and disorienting, but ever
since we introduced
Scratch
'N Win ballots, they seem to enjoy and understand
voting more than ever,"
Hossler said. "Oftentimes, they'll buy up to 20
ballots at once."
Those who play and fail to win any votes may not
be completely
disenfranchised, as many states are implementing a
mail-in program in
which
the losing ballots will be entered into a drawing
to win a possible
three-fifths vote, redeemable at next year's
county-level elections.
Officials at the U.S. Federal Election Commission
stressed that voting
should be used for entertainment purposes only,
saying that the actual
odds
of a citizen making a difference are 1 in 440,000.
© 2006, Onion, Inc.