Software glitch halts lottery sales in NJ

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Officials say a software upgrade to lottery ticket printers blocked an unknown number of New Jersey retailers from selling draw games from Pick 3 to Powerball.

The Record reports the glitch was expected to be fixed by Monday afternoon, but it took until Thursday for nearly all of the retailers to be operational.

The outage comes as Northstar New Jersey, the private company hired to run the sales and marketing of the lottery, has fallen more than $170 million short of its net income targets the first two years of its 15-year contract.

The lottery is New Jersey's fourth-largest revenue source.

Lottery spokeswoman Judith Drucker says the software was "fully tested" before it was downloaded to the network and "there was no indication of a problem."