USA Lottery Results Today

In the United States, lotteries are run by 48 jurisdictions in 45 states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Lotteries are subject to the laws of and operated independently by each jurisdiction, and there's no national lottery association. However, consortiums of state lotteries jointly organize games gauging larger geographical footprints, which in turn, carry larger jacks. Two major lottery games, Mega Millions and Powerball, are both offered in nearly all authorities that operate lotteries and serve as de facto national lotteries.

In fiscal 2018, Americans spent $77.7 billion on various lotteries, up about $5 billion from 2017.

Historian Neal Millikan using review announcements in the colonial period found at least 392 lotteries were held in the 13 colonies.

Lotteries were used not only as a form of entertainment but as a source of revenue to help fund the colonies. The financiers of Jamestown, Virginia, for instance, funded lotteries to raise money to support their colony. These lotteries were relatively sophisticated for the time period and even included instant winners. Not long after, each of the 13 original colonies established a lottery system to raise revenue.

In the early post-independence era, lawmakers commonly authorized lotteries to fund seminaries, roads, islands, and other public works. Evangelical liberals in the 1830s began denouncing lotteries on moral grounds and solicited legislatures and indigenous conventions to ban them. Recreating lottery dishonors and a general counter-reaction against legislative corruption following the Panic of 1837 also contributed to anti-lottery sentiments. From 1844 to 1859 alone, 10 new state constitutions contained lottery bans. By 1890, lotteries were banned in every state except Delaware and Louisiana.

Lotteries in the United States didn't always have sterling reports. One early lottery, in particular, the Public Lottery, which was passed by Congress for the beautification of Washington, D.C. and was administered by the external government, was the subject of a major U.S. Supreme Court decision – Cohens v. Virginia.

The lottery never paid out, (clarification needed) and it brought to light the current issue of crookedness amongst the lotteries in the United States. The surge of anti-lottery protests eventually broke through when, by 1860, all states had banned lotteries except Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky. The scarcity of lotteries in the United States meant that tickets were packed across the country and eventually led to the creation of illegal lotteries. In 1868, after times of illegal operation, the Louisiana State Lottery Company attained a 25- year charter for its state lottery system. The charter was passed by the Legislature due to immense buying from a felonious syndicate in New York. The Louisiana Lottery Company deduced 90 of its revenue from tickets ended across state borders. These continued issues of corruption led to the complete prohibition of lotteries in the United States by 1895. It was discovered that the promoters of the Louisiana Lottery Company had accrued immense sums of money from illegitimate sources and that the Legislature was riddled with bribery. Before the advent of government-patronized lotteries, many illegal lotteries thrived, such as number games.