It was around this time of year, twenty-one years ago, that North Carolina came within a single vote of rejecting a state-operated lottery.

I thought about that recently and remember it quite well.

On August 30, 2005, I left my home in Kenly at 4:00 a.m. and drove about 200 miles to North Wilkesboro. Sen. John Garwood, an opponent of the lottery, was home ill and unable to attend the Senate session.

His absence was critical. I went to his home and urged him to “pair” his vote with a lottery supporter to preserve his opposition despite his absence. After we talked, Garwood agreed and paired his vote with Sen. Larry Shaw of Fayetteville.

For a time, it appeared that a vote calendared to approve the lottery that day would surely fail.

Later that morning, however, after a conference call with Senate leaders, Garwood withdrew the pairing. The Senate deadlocked 24-24, and Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue cast the deciding vote in favor of the lottery. Gov. Mike Easley signed it into law the following day.

I grieved over the vote for weeks.

I vividly remember not only how narrowly the lottery passed but also what had been promised when it did.

The biggest promise was simple: lottery money would “supplement, not supplant” education funding.

This was more than political rhetoric. Easley’s senior fiscal adviser publicly stated that the governor insisted that lottery revenues would “supplement education, not supplant existing programs.” More significantly, the original State Lottery Act declared that lottery revenues “shall not supplant” existing expenditures and “shall supplement rather than be used as substitute funds.”

That distinction is crucial.

Suppose the state already spends $100 on education and the lottery generates another $10. “Supplement” means education now receives $110. But if lawmakers reduce ordinary funding by $10 and replace it with $10 from the lottery, education still receives $100. The lottery is technically “funding education,” but it has added nothing.

A 2011 North Carolina Justice Center study found that lottery proceeds were increasingly replacing rather than enhancing traditional education spending. The organization reported that K-12 spending had fallen below its pre-lottery level by 2010-11, even before adjusting for inflation and enrollment growth.

The original spending formula also disappeared.

When enacted, lottery proceeds were allocated 50 percent to early-grade class-size reduction and prekindergarten for at-risk children, 40 percent to public-school construction, and 10 percent to need-based college scholarships.

In 2013, lawmakers removed the 50-40-10 formula. Today, the General Assembly annually appropriates lottery net revenues for broadly defined education-related purposes.

Even more striking, the original statutory declaration that lottery funds must supplement, not supplant, existing funds is no longer part of the law. Today, the law simply states that the lottery and other sanctioned gaming enterprises generate funds for public purposes and support responsible gaming.

In other words, the lottery that North Carolina currently operates is not governed by the same protections that applied when it was originally sold.

Now, a newly released state audit makes the contrast even more troubling.

State Auditor Dave Boliek’s office reported that lottery sales surged by an astonishing 51 percent over two years, rising from $4.3 billion in fiscal year 2023 to $6.6 billion in fiscal year 2025. Yet the amount transferred to public education remained essentially flat at about $1 billion annually.

The percentage of lottery sales allocated to education actually fell from 23 percent in 2023 to just 16 percent in 2025.

One major reason is the explosive growth of digital instant games – online games resembling casino slot machines. They went from producing no lottery revenue in fiscal year 2023 to $2.6 billion in fiscal year 2025, accounting for approximately 40 percent of all lottery sales. Because these games return a much larger share of wagers to players in prizes, the resulting surge in gambling revenue has not produced a comparable increase for education.

Boliek put the matter plainly: the Education Lottery today “isn’t what it used to be.”

That is precisely the point.

Certainly, more than a billion dollars for education sounds substantial. But when gambling activity can increase by billions while education funding remains virtually unchanged, and when only about 16 cents of every dollar wagered ultimately reaches education, the name “Education Lottery” creates an impression that warrants much greater scrutiny.

The state auditor’s office has now recommended that the Lottery and the General Assembly clarify the lottery’s primary objective: maximizing total dollars for education, maintaining a minimum percentage of lottery revenue for education, or balancing the two.

That question is revealing in itself.

Twenty-one years after lawmakers approved an “Education Lottery,” the state is still asking what its relationship to education should be.

That's why I believe the lottery involves more than a broken governmental promise. It reveals something deeper about gambling itself.

Gambling trades in a lie.

It promises prosperity without productivity. It whispers that wealth need not come through labor, patience, discipline, stewardship, or service to others. One ticket, one number, or one lucky break might change everything.

Scripture teaches another way: “Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall increase” (Proverbs 13:11).

Gambling advertises winners while depending on losers. The smiling jackpot winner gets the photograph; the millions who supplied the losing dollars are rarely, if ever, in view. Everyone is encouraged to imagine himself the winner, even though the system survives only because the vast majority of players will lose.

It promises freedom from financial worries yet sometimes brings financial ruin. It feeds covetousness while calling it entertainment. It places hope in chance rather than in contentment, work, stewardship, and faith in God.

State-sponsored gambling makes the deception worse because the government does not merely permit it; it promotes it.

And today, the machinery of state-sponsored gambling is expanding far faster than the educational benefit that was used to justify it.

Just a little more than two decades ago, I drove across our state before sunrise because I believed that government-sponsored gambling was wrong.

I still believe it – now more than ever.

North Carolina placed the noble word “Education” before the word “Lottery.” But a good cause cannot sanctify a bad means. A lie doesn’t become the truth just because some of its proceeds are spent on something good.

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