Lottery backers, foes prepare for vote

Web posted October 23, 2000

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By Margaret N. O'Shea
South Carolina Bureau

While some voters struggle with conflicting commentary on lotteries, Gail Crowder of Windsor and Nancy Reed of Aiken are primed to vote Nov. 7.

But their views on a lottery to help fund education are as distant as their homes in a county beribboned with 1,000 miles of roads.

Mrs. Crowder thought she had won $5 in the Georgia Lottery last year but couldn't cash her ticket where she had bought it. With Christmas shopping interrupted, she fumed all the way to the district lottery office on Washington Road, where a cashier saw she had actually won $150,000.

``I was looking at the wrong line on the ticket. I like to have died,'' said Mrs. Crowder, who still buys a lottery ticket in Georgia every Saturday. To her, the lottery is a harmless pastime that does some good for education and - for some people - pays off.

``Look at all that Georgia school kids get from the lottery that our kids can't. How can people possibly be so opposed to it?'' she said last week.

Mrs. Reed has answered that question for friends and neighbors in Aiken Estates many times since the the lottery went on the ballot. When vote-no yard signs were available at St. John's Methodist Church, where Mrs. Reed works with a ``Church and Society'' committee, she took a stack to share, as she did when her church opposed video poker.

``I have one in my yard,'' she said. ``I gave one to a neighbor around the corner, and another one up the street. It was one thing I could do to take a stand.''

To her, a lottery is immoral and addictive, does little good for education and takes from the poor.

``How could people possibly be for it?'' she asked.

In Aiken County, lottery opponents like Mrs. Reed abound, as noticeable as the signs in their yards. But nobody knows how many there are like Mrs. Crowder, who are not working to persuade others but who plan to vote a strong mind.

And the voters unlike them, who are undecided, are targets of intense campaigns, pro and con, as Election Day nears.

Reach Margaret N. O'Shea at (803) 279-6895.

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