Official lottery – A public lottery where people can win cash and other prizes by paying an entry fee, often through tickets or scratch-off games. Lottery proceeds are used to fund many state education systems. In New York, lottery proceeds have provided billions of dollars for education since the lottery began in 1967. Most states also offer instant lottery games, which use paper tickets with a printed game board and barcode to scan at official machines. Some states offer keno and video lottery terminals. In the US, the first modern government-run lottery was established in Puerto Rico in 1934 and in 1964 the New Hampshire Lottery became the first to operate under a state charter. Prior to that, illegal lotteries such as number games operated with great success. However, numerous issues of crookedness and moral religious objections led to state prohibition by 1895.

The first recorded lotteries were held in the Low Countries in the 15th century, where town records show that money was raised to build walls and town fortifications. Later lotteries were hailed as a painless form of taxation for the poor, although they actually ended up raising a relatively small percentage of overall state budgets.

In the post-World War II era, as states began to expand their social safety nets with things like universal health care, many of them turned to the lottery for additional revenue. But a big problem with lotteries is that they make it too easy to gamble. This, combined with the fact that lottery money ends up being a drop in the bucket for actual state governments, is what makes people so mad about them.