Dead Or Alive: Alabama Lottery Makes Surprise Reappearance

After the lottery hit a stumbling block in the house yesterday, everyone wrote the bill off as dead for the general election.

But some senators tried to find a way around that Wednesday.

Lawmakers were working with August 24th as a hard deadline for the lottery legislation to be on the ballot in November, but they seemed to think that there was some wiggle room today.

“I don’t know if it was intentional or if it was a blunder, but the house really screwed it up,” said Sen. Del Marsh.

The day started with senators upset that the house threw the lottery bill off track, effectively killing it for the November election.

But then it took a different turn.

After reviewing the law, senators thought there was a two day loophole they could exploit between the deadline and the time the Secretary of State started printing ballots.

“Well, that’s the law, that’s all i can tell you. We’ve looked at two different areas of law, one that references a 76 number, one a 74 number. that’s where the confusion comes in,” said Sen. Marsh.

The ultimate authority of just how this all works is Secretary of State John Merrill. After consulting the law, he says as of right now, the lottery can’t be on the November ballot.

“Until I am charged by a court of law or a judicial officer of standing, then we will not accept an amendment to go on the November 8 ballot because we will be after the august 24 deadline,” said Merrill.

But as things usually go with politics, there’s still a longshot that things could change. Merrill asked Attorney General luther strange for an opinion on the issue, just to be on the safe side.

“So we have asked for an emergency opinion to be rendered because we simply implement the law. We don’t interpret the law. But the attorney general is capable of interpreting the law and we ask him for opinions from time to time,” said Merrill.

The lottery did pass out of a house committee and should be debated Thursday, so it looks like we’ll just have to wait and see if anything changes.

Lawmakers will return to the state house Thursday and could finish the regular session this week.