http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/17/lottery.m...t.ap/index.html

Should he be awarded the money or not?

Pay the money - Take the opposite situation where the actual winning ticket was "misprinted" so that the holder never knew he won the grand prize because the printed number was wrong? Who goes to the trouble of checking the barcode to see if he/she has a winning ticket? Good incentive for the state to ensure that all their printers are working properly.

I'm sure it'll come down to some legal argument based upon the rules for playing the lottery that no one ever reads.

Not much different than Casinos who have a guest win a 1,000,000 slot machine jackpot, only to come back and say "Sorry. Machine error. You get nothing".

Payments from the lottery are confirmed and denied by the will of the company (or government) that runs them.

Should he be paid (as a moral question)? I don't know

In the end, the final decision of the lottery is up to them. Do they want to ruin their reputation and not pay him? Can they get sued? Do they want to save some money and not pay him? Was the ticket even legit? These are all valid questions.

lotteries are -ev

You are a fountain of knowledge.

I think if they don't pay him a lot of people are gonna gripe about how the lottery system sucks _{while they stand in line to buy their tickets.}

Sure, their reputation will be ruined, but people will still play. Obviously I don't know what the lottery takes in, but it would seem they could pay him off as a gesture of good will and not be hurt by it. On the other hand, it sets a precedence for scammers to somehow alter tickets and claim they are misprints.

If it's a legit ticket and the State's fault that it was misprinted, then I would say he's owed somthing.