United States
Lotteries in the U.S. were considering VLTs as early as 1981, when a planned experiment with 20 machines by the New York State Lottery was scrapped, after the Attorney General determined they would be illegal. A similar plan by the New Jersey Lottery died in 1983 after ties between state officials and VLT manufacturers raised conflict of interest concerns.
The first VLTs in the country were installed in late 1983 by Bellevue, Nebraska as part of its municipal lottery. Eleven other local lotteries in Nebraska followed suit, until the state banned the devices, effective 1985.
South Dakota became, on October 16, 1989, the first state to adopt VLTs. In a unique arrangement with private industry, the machines are owned by private companies but monitored by the South Dakota Lottery via a centralized computer system that assures the integrity of the games. South Dakota imposes a substantial tax on the net income (gross income minus player winnings) of the games. Beginning in 1992, four attempts were made to repeal South Dakota's video lottery; all were widely rejected by public votes. Most recently, in May 2006, petitions were filed containing over 21,000 signatures in order to place the issue on the November ballot; voters again agreed to keep video lottery, by a 66%-34% margin.
Other US jurisdictions which have had legal video lottery include Oregon, South Carolina (formerly), Rhode Island, Delaware, New York, West Virginia, Louisiana, Maryland, and Montana. Of these, Delaware, Rhode Island, and West Virginia formerly participated in a shared VLT game, Cashola.
The U.S. Virgin Islands also has a legalized video lottery, managed by Southland Gaming of the Virgin Islands. The local governments in St. Thomas and St. John use the funds generated by the video lottery to fund various government programs on the islands; primarily focusing on educational efforts.
Read more about this topic: Video Lottery Terminal
Famous quotes related to united states:
“In the United States, it is now possible for a person eighteen years of age, female as well as male, to graduate from high school, college, or university without ever having cared for, or even held, a baby; without ever having comforted or assisted another human being who really needed help. . . . No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations, and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada are the horns, the head, the neck, the shins, and the hoof of the ox, and the United States are the ribs, the sirloin, the kidneys, and the rest of the body.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)
“America—rather, the United States—seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted, overfriendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The schnuckle among the nations of the world.”
—Edna Ferber (1887–1968)
“... when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everyone will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people believe that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses were always hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon to-day has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)