OKLAHOMA CITY, April 21 (UPI) -- Seven out of 10 Oklahomans want the state to adopt a lottery system to fund education, a poll conducted for the Daily Oklahoman and KWTV said.
The findings published Sunday in the Daily Oklahoman found about 67 percent of those polled said the state should have a lottery. That number rose to 73 percent when respondents were told the money would be used for education.
The University of Oklahoma Political Science Department's Public Opinion Learning Laboratory conducted the poll. The random survey of 400 Oklahomans has a 5 percent margin of error.
The findings closely resemble poll results at the end of 1993, which show 63 percent of residents wanted a lottery. The lottery was defeated in May 1994 by about the same percentage as those who said they supported it.
The Oklahoma Constitution must be changed by the people or the Legislature to make a lottery legal.
The survey, however, did refute one aspect of the argument of lottery opponents.
According to the poll, the people who gambled the least were in households with combined annual incomes of less than $30,000. The most likely gamblers made more than $75,000 a year.
"It's not the poor people betting a lot of money. It's the middle income people," Gary Copeland, director of the Carl Albert Center and the faculty adviser for the poll told Sunday's editions of the Daily Oklahoman.
Of those who said they gambled in the last year. 39 percent said they bought a lottery ticket in one o0f 38 states that have a lottery. Those state include Missouri, Texas, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico.
State Sen. Brad Henry, D-Shawnee, introduced a bill in the state Senate this year that would have allowed Oklahomans to vote on the issue. He was forced to withdraw the legislation after realizing there was not enough support for the measure to pass the Legislature.
Henry told the Daily Oklahoman that a lottery had the potential of raising $300 million for education.
