Georgia Lottery

The Georgia Lottery is run by the U.S. state of Georgia. Headquartered in Atlanta and run by the Georgia Lottery Corporation, the lottery takes in over US$1 billion yearly. Half the money goes to prizes, one-third to education, and the remainder to operating and marketing the lottery. The education money funds the HOPE Scholarship, and has become a successful model for other states, including the new South Carolina Education Lottery.

Long unconstitutional, a state-run lottery was explicitly allowed in a 1992 amendment to Article I, Section II, Paragraph VIII of the Georgia State Constitution.

The original weekly jackpot game, Lotto Georgia, later merged with two other lotteries to become Lotto South. Like neighboring Florida, Georgia also has a once-daily Fantasy 5 game. There are also the twice-daily, once on Sunday, Cash 3 and Cash 4 games. It also participates in the multi-jurisdictional Mega Millions lottery, and has numerous scratch-and-win instant games which change frequently. In February 2006, Lotto South ended; its replacement does not have a cash option.

The GLC was created in 1992 by the Georgia General Assembly and then-governor of Georgia Zell Miller in the Lottery for Education Act (OCGA 50-27). Rebecca Paul, who began the Florida Lottery, then ran the Georgia Lottery for its first decade, before leaving to start up the new Tennessee Lottery in 2004.

In the mid-1990s, Georgia had offered Powerball, but switched to The Big Game (now Mega Millions) when it began in 1996. (The Florida Lottery announced on July 2, 2008, that it will be joining Powerball in January 2009.)

References

[http://www.galottery.com Official page]
[http://www.lotteryinsider.com/people/bios/paul.htm Rebecca Paul]
[http://www.lotteryinsider.com/people/bios/defrancisco.htm Margaret DeFrancisco]