Should lottery winners be permitted to remain anonymous?
We favor Missouri's disclosure requirement, shared by some, but not all, states.
The question of anonymity versus disclosure is being revisited in connection with the recent $1.6 billion, multi-state Powerball drawing won by people in three states - California, Florida and Tennessee.
Those three states require lottery winners to disclose their names, mirroring the policies in most other participating states. Although Missouri does disclose the names of winners, it does not require winners to attend a press conference.
Anonymity by winners is allowed by other states, including Delaware, Kansas, Maryland, North Dakota, Ohio and South Carolina.
And some states - including Colorado, Connecticut and Vermont - will award prizes to a trust and allow the trustee, typically an attorney, to collect the prize without disclosing the name of the winner.
Advocates of anonymity contend winners attract opportunists, including scam artists. A recent Associated Press story quoted Andrew Stoltmann, an Illinois attorney who has represented winners, saying "they get harassed and harangued into some horrifically bad investments."
Disclosure proponents contend publicizing the names of winners preserves the integrity of the process. Gary Grief, chairman of the Powerball committee for the Multi-State Lottery Association, called disclosure "a positive thing to reinforce to players that real people do win and that those real people don't work for the lottery or aren't involved with the lottery."
We support the disclosure requirement because lotteries, as government-sponsored operations, are public rather than private business.
Privacy advocates can elect not to participate in a public lottery process. And people who do participate must expect the publicity that comes with suddenly acquiring wealth through a public process.
In a government process that distributes money of these magnitudes, transparency and disclosure are required to preserve public trust.