Official Lottery is an app that allows you to check results and purchase lottery tickets. It is available on both iPhone and Android devices. It also enables you to scan your ticket barcodes and find out if you are a winner. The app is easy to use and offers a variety of features. However, it has a few shortcomings, including the fact that scanning is slow and the app doesn’t work well with certain tickets.

The history of state-run lotteries in America, as Cohen tells it, begins in the late nineteen twenties when, with a growing population and rising inflation, it became increasingly difficult for states to balance their budgets without raising taxes or cutting services. Since American voters were notoriously tax-averse, politicians began pushing the idea of a national lottery to raise money.

At first, legalization advocates wildly overinflated the impact that lottery proceeds could have on state coffers. For example, when New Jersey’s first lottery game was launched, supporters predicted that the revenue would float the entire state budget. But, after a few years, those figures proved false. Instead, legalization advocates began promoting the lottery as a way to subsidize a single line item—invariably some government service that was both popular and nonpartisan—such as education or public parks or aid for veterans.

That narrower message was more appealing to voters. Across the country, the lottery quickly spread. It is now, as Cohen writes, “a part of the fabric of modern life.” Only Alabama, Hawaii, Mississippi, Utah and Nevada do not run their own lotteries.