Gov. Andrew Cuomo has vetoed a bill that would have allowed lottery winners to keep their identities private. As it turns out, lottery winners from New York will still have to go public if they hit the jackpot.
The presentations and sharing of certain information provides comfort to the general public that there was an actual winner, and the State was not simply adding all the money to its own coffers,” wrote Gov. Cuomo in his official veto message.
The issue of staying anonymous after winning the lottery has been raised many times in America in 2018. A New Hampshire winner has managed to keep her identity private after scooping a $560 million jackpot in the US Powerball. This has made more winners hope that they could skip some of the post-jackpot publicity drama.
There are only six US states that allow lottery winners to remain anonymous. These are Maryland, Ohio, South Carolina, Dawahare, Kansas, and North Dakota. If Gov. Cuomo had approved the bill, New York would have become the seventh.
Connecticut, Vermont, Colorado, and Massachusetts allow winners to collect their jackpots anonymously through legal trusts. Along with the six other states, these are the only parts of America where lottery winners can choose whether or not to go public after scooping the first prize.
The most recent jackpot winner from New York, Mr. Robert Bailey won $343 million in the US Powerball. While he took part in the standard publicity event with the giant cheque, he said that he wished he could have stayed anonymous.
After Gov. Cuomo’s vetoing the lottery bill, it looks like the names of jackpot winners from New York will continue to be made public by the state. The New Hampshire winner has created an important precedent for the anonymity issue, but it is going to take much more for this to be implemented country-wise.