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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that the lotto wants free advertising at the cost of the winners being made very public.

It seems like this individual is doing a tremendous public service by taking this to court. I think most of us would balk at the risk of somehow losing the millions of dollars.

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The point of it is to avoid fraud.

But how does making the winner's name public avoid fraud? I assume the government needs to look at something and say "looks legit". So couldn't they do that in private? Have some judge or gov't official put their stamp on it and say "yes, the winner was a real person not affiliated with the lottery" or whatever needs to happen.

I think it's more unofficial than that. As other people have said in this thread, identifying the people publicly allows others to see their face, and see that they are real people. If it were simply "A judge has declared the winner legit" every time, people would get suspicious.

Who cares if people are suspicious? People believe in chem trails and all kinds of crap, no one has to take a publicity hit to calm them.

Because if people are suspicious they stop buying tickets.

Good, a tax on the uneducated, desperate, and mathematically illiterate is cruel and morally reprehensible to begin with. Propping it all up with publicity generated at the direct expense of the winners is pathetic.

What about those who are educated, successful and well versed in the mathematics of probability? They should be prevented from playing because you feel that some people should be protected from themselves?

Or do we now need an IQ test before certain types of activities can be enjoyed?

Who is talking about preventing anyone? All it's being said is that they won't get the name of the previous winners.

Yes, but governmental, judicial, and financial malfeasance do happen. And with this much money involved, there's basically a certainty that it would. Government-sponsored entities awarding millions of dollars to anonymous persons gets sketchy really quickly.

...But they are allowed to collect anonymously, this is over a technicality.

If the fact that a name gets attached to the prize is the only thing stopping them, then they could easily make up a name and photoshop a picture. This feels like it's getting into conspiracy theory territory.

The point of oversight is to avoid fraud. The point of releasing a name is for publicity and nothing else.

How does releasing someone's name and location even avoid fraud within itself? It only works if people invade that individual's privacy (e.g. job, associations, etc).

there are plenty of ways to avoid fraud without having to recall the identity to the public, the main being state auditing of all lotteries, which should probably happen anyways

I believe the issue with state's auditing their own lotteries is that it still leaves a fair bit of room for public corruption. By declaring winners openly, it avails anyone among the public to research potential corrupt connections between lottery winners and lottery operators.

A third party should audit the lottery, not the state. If the payouts are from a purchased annuity, this type of audit is almost certainly required - not the state auditing itself but a 3rd party auditor.

They allow trusts though, so they just need to let her replace her signature with the name of a trust and everybody is happy.

> My understanding is that the lotto wants free advertising

What's free about it? They will advertise the win one way or another, just in this instance using a verifiable name of an individual.

That might make the advertising more believable or relatable and effective but doesn't make it 'free'.

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