There's a machine across from the bar in the lounge of the Elks Lodge on Congress Street. Stacked up inside it are tickets with names like Luck Be a Lady, Quack Pot and Duck Bucks. They cost $1, but some conceal a $500 prize.
They're known as "instant bingo" tickets, with pull-tabs that reveal winning combinations, but they function much like lottery scratch-offs. In Florida's complex, sometimes conflicting menagerie of gaming legislation, the tickets, it would appear, fall within the bounds of the law.
The machines that hold them might be another story.
The Pasco County Sheriff's Office recently sought an opinion from Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum on the legalities of instant bingo, who can run it and how the tickets can be dispensed. McCollum's office responded this week. Sheriff's Office attorney Mike Randall interpreted the opinion to say that only groups who run real-time bingo — the traditional "N, 33" variety — can sell instant bingo tickets. But they can't be sold from a machine (see pulltab machines) like the one at New Port Richey Elks 2284, Randall said, because that falls under the definition of a slot machine, and slot machines are outlawed.
"This is an area where the state is — I don't know the phrase — divided, perplexed," Randall said.
For the complete story, please see Molly Moorhead,State Attorney General rules against use of 'instant bingo' machines, St. Petersburg Times, July 12, 2008.
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