Arizona Capitol Reports Staff//November 17, 2006//[read_meter]
Arizona Capitol Reports Staff//November 17, 2006//[read_meter]
How many people would turn thumbs down on a free million-dollar lottery ticket?
In Arizona, at least 780,698 did.
But the man behind the idea to pay one lucky voter $1 million, Dr. Mark Osterloh, is confident someone, somewhere will pick up on his reward-a-voter idea.
He sees it as a way to increase voter turnout.
“People were calling Wilbur and Orville Wright wacky when they said people could fly,” Mr. Osterloh said.
Mr. Osterloh, a Tucson ophthalmologist, regretted that he and supporters of Prop. 200 did not do any promotional advertising. “It’s a new idea, and people were a little skeptical about it, which is all right,” he said.
Despite its 2-to-1 defeat — only 380,562 people voted for it, with a small number of votes still uncounted — “it’s out there in the intellectual hopper for people to think about,” he said.
Mr. Osterloh’s proposition that the state award one randomly chosen voter a $1 million prize to entice people to vote reached the ballot after supporters gathered almost 184,000 signatures — about 50 percent more than needed.
It would have assigned each voter a number, with the commission that oversees the Arizona Lottery holding a public drawing after Election Day. The prize would have come from unclaimed lottery winnings.
Critics: Idea trivializes voting process
Critics said it was everything from unconstitutional to an idea that would trivialize the electoral process and distort the outcome.
So why did it fail?
“That’s an easy one,” said Bruce Merrill, an Arizona State University professor and pollster. “It violates the basic value that Americans hold that you shouldn’t have to pay people to go out to the polls, and the suspicion that if you have to pay people to vote, that they really shouldn’t go out to the polls. It really isn’t any more complex than that.”
Dr. Fred Brickman, a Tucson radiologist, said, “I voted for it.” Mr. Brickman said he thinks it failed because “people thought that it was silly and stupid. But if you can get more people to vote, it’s a good idea.”
The Nov. 7 voter turnout may have made Mr. Osterloh’s point. Unofficial results showed only 47 percent of more than 2.5 million eligible voters cast ballots — 30 percent below 2004, 9 percent less than in 2002 and nearly 15 percent less than in 2000.
Mr. Osterloh has run for governor and has helped with initiative campaigns for health care, publicly financed political campaigns and independent redistricting — which he may try to refine.
He remains sold on the reward idea.
“I believe somebody is eventually going to bring this back and get this approved somewhere around the world, and it’s going to spread,” he said.
“If anybody has a better idea of how to get people to vote, let me know and I will support it.”
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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