Get fun and convenience right in the palm of your hand with the official lottery app. Download the app and play lottery games at licensed retailers throughout New York State.
The official lottery raises money for the arts, sports, charities and national heritage projects. It is regulated by the Gambling Commission and operated by Camelot. A lottery is an arrangement in which prizes are allocated by a process that relies entirely on chance. The prizes are often money or goods and the arrangement is usually advertised in newspapers.
Lotteries have a long history in Europe and the United States. They have been used by many of the founding fathers, including Benjamin Franklin, who ran a lottery in Philadelphia to help establish a militia for defense against French attacks on the city, and John Hancock, who organized one to fund Boston’s Faneuil Hall. Denmark Vesey, an enslaved man in Charleston, won a lottery prize that allowed him to buy his freedom. But religious and moral sensibilities turned against gambling in general beginning in the 1800s, with ten states banning the practice between 1844 and 1859. Corruption also contributed to the turn, with lottery organizers sometimes selling tickets and absconding with the money without distributing prizes.
It was largely a need for revenue, rather than an ideological desire to encourage gambling, that prompted the adoption of a lottery in every state in the mid-twentieth century. But, as Cohen explains, that dynamic created a symbiotic relationship in which voters want states to spend more and politicians view the lottery as a way of getting tax money without provoking an anti-tax revolt.