MD Lottery

MD Lottery

Lottery games, the Ping-Pong balls get all the attention. They carry the numbers that determine if players of games such as Lotto, Fantasy 5 and Cash 3 are winners. Few people pay attention to the machines used to select the balls. At least, not until something goes wrong, as happened last week when a Lotto ball was selected . . . and then fell back into the machine's mixing chamber. In an instant, the machine, manufactured by Garron Lottery Products in Baltimore, was the center of attention. The company, formerly a division of a plastics company by the same name that made everything from high-end museum display cases to precision parts for defense contractors, had no comment. Company officials did not return repeated calls to discuss their lottery machines. Garron has a solid track record and is one of the world's leading manufacturers of lottery machines, said Jackie Barreiros, Lottery director of public affairs. The company has earned about $237,000 from the Florida Lottery over the past decade.

The Florida Lottery has three machines for each of its games: Lotto, Mega Money, Fantasy 5, Cash 3 and Play 4. Before each drawing, one of the three machines and the set of balls to be used are randomly selected, Florida Lottery officials can't remember a problem such as the one that occurred last week. The Lottery conducts routine maintenance on the machines and occasionally has to make repairs, such as replacing an acrylic part or motor switch, Barreiros said. An inspection of the Lotto machine used in last week's drawing discovered an issue with the third feeder tube. It was corrected, and the machine was put back in service, she said. Florida is one of 14 states that use Garron machines for its lotteries, according to the company's Web site. They are also used by lotteries in Egypt, Guatemala, Leeward Islands, Malta, Nigeria, Russia, Saipan and Uzbekistan, according to the company's Web site.

In Lotto, six numbers are drawn, one at a time, with air pushing them from the mixing chamber into small chambers where the numbers are displayed on camera during the 11:15 p.m. drawings on Wednesday and Saturday nights. But as last Saturday's numbers were being selected, hostess Michele Lyles stood behind the machine for a few seconds as the third ball drawn failed to appear at the end of the chamber. She finally called out the ball as 48. "The number 48 ball actually made it all the way into the top chamber -- where the winning numbers are displayed -- for a quick moment," Barreiros said. "It happened very fast, but our security staff was able to see it when viewing the tape very slowly." The ball remained in the tube until Lyles released the air to let it drop back into the mixing chamber, Barreiros said. Then the final three balls were drawn. "Any ball that enters the display tube and rises above the top of the mixing chamber is the winning number for that display tube," she said "Therefore, the ball was declared a winning number."