November 12, 2008

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- South Carolina Education Lottery officials say a new computer system has created problems in identifying winning tickets.

The State newspaper reported that a lottery official could not say Tuesday how many tickets have been misread by the new system installed Nov. 5.

Some winning scratch-off tickets have been counted as losers and some losing tickets have been counted as winners. Some winning Powerball tickets and some other tickets bought before the new system was installed could not be read.

Lottery officials say they changed contractors and installed new computers to allow retailers to sell tickets 24 hours a day.

Officials say some tickets made by Scientific Games have been hard to read by the new contractor, Intralot. They say most of the problems have been resolved.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)