Losers: CT Lottery announces its terminals may not provide accurate readings of winning tickets.

The Connecticut Lottery Corporation made an extraordinary public admission of failure Wednesday. It issued a warning to customers not to trust its retail terminals when checking tickets. New technology, launched in May, has featured ticket readers providing inaccurate responses. Winning tickets are not always properly read by the expensive new equipment.

This is a significant blunder for the quasi-public agency that has a history of them. The CT Lottery wrote that it “is advising players that if they have any lottery tickets purchased since May 21, 2023 and believe the lottery terminal response was incorrect when checking if the ticket had won or not, to hold on to their ticket and contact the CT Lottery at (860) 713-2700 or CTLotterySecurity@ctlottery.org.”

The statement ignores the purpose of the terminals that read tickets after a drawing. Many customers rely on the terminals for an accurate reading of their tickets and do not check them themselves. They would be unlikely to detect a winning ticket read as a losing one. The terminals should be disabled from reading tickets if they are not accurate.

Governor Ned Lamont chose to ignore innovation when he agreed to give the state’s two federally recognized tribes and the Connecticut Lottery Corporation to run sports betting in the state. More than ever, this added responsibility looks far beyond the capability of the often-troubled CT Lottery.

Published August 3, 2023.