Gambling is a lousy way to finance state government. Voters should reject this expansion of what was already a bad idea.
Supporters point to lotteries as a way for the state to raise money without imposing taxes.
Like all free-lunch schemes, however, such reasoning is based on a con. Lotteries do nothing but redirect money from the weakest, poorest and most susceptible among us to the state s coffers. They are every bit as much a tax as any other levy, except that they are based on gullibility and mathematical ignorance instead of a vote of the people or the decisions of our elected representatives. Expanding that kind of racket to include other states may perpetuate the fraud, but it does nothing to legitimize it. All rights reserved.