Looks like $1M voter lottery will be on ballot

Get-out-the vote carrot would reward 1 person

By Howard Fischer

CAPITOL MEDIA SERVICES

PHOENIX — If you cast a ballot next September you already may be a winner of $1 million.

That's because Mark Osterloh, the sponsor of an initiative to give away a cool million to one lucky voter every election, said Thursday that he has more than enough signatures to put the measure on the November ballot.

And Osterloh has structured it so that if the election lottery passes it's retroactive. One random voter from the September primary will get a check, as will another chosen from among those who go to the polls in November — even if the person ends up voting against Osterloh's plan.

Osterloh said that's fine with him because it will prove his theory that people are more likely to vote if there's some reward behind it.

Whether that's actually true, however, remains to be seen. The last statewide poll done on the issue in 2003 showed 12 percent of those questioned saying a $1 million drawing would be more likely to make them vote, 10 percent saying it would be less likely and pretty much everyone else saying it would make no difference at all.

Osterloh, however, said the gamble is worth it. He said only about half the people who could vote even bother to register, with only half of those, on average, actually voting.

That still leaves the question of whether people will bother to vote for a 1-in-2 million chance of winning when they can't be bothered to help decide who should run the country and the state and which ballot measures, including his own, should be approved.

"People don't always do what they should do," he said.

Anyway, he said, it's little different from religion, which he also said is based on incentives.

"What does God say? Do what you're supposed to do and I will reward you with eternal life in heaven," Osterloh said. "The only thing that we're saying is do what you're supposed to do and vote and we'll reward you with $1 million."

Osterloh, a Tucson physician and unsuccessful 2002 Democratic gubernatorial candidate, apparently is willing to back the idea with his own money. Reports on file with the Secretary of State's Office show virtually all of the approximately $185,000 spent gathering the signatures has come from donations or loans from himself.

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