A new bill in the Alabama House would let voters decide this year on whether to allow a state lottery.

The bill, prefiled on Tuesday by State Rep. Steve Clouse (R-Ozark), has more than 70 co-sponsors, including Alabama Speaker of the House Mac McCutcheon, Majority Leader Nathaniel Ledbetter (R-Rainsville) and Minority Leader Anthony Daniels (D-Huntsville).

It comes only a week after the first meeting of Gov. Kay Ivey’s Study Group on Gambling Policy, which has a deadline of year’s end for its findings. A bill last year, which would have implemented a lottery with multi-state games, failed a procedural vote, which would have brought it to the House floor, by one vote.

Alabama is the only state east of the Mississippi without a lottery.

The seven-page draft bill proposes a constitutional amendment to allow the sale of lottery tickets, including instant tickets and multi-state lottery games, as well as the creation of a Lottery Trust Fund and authorization for the Legislature to pass laws for the lottery’s regulation.

The bill would put the proposed amendment before voters during the Nov. 3 general election.

As for the proceeds, the bill would allow one-quarter of one percent of the net amount to be used “to fund programs that aid compulsive gambling.” The remainder would go into a separate Lottery Trust Fund, with yearly appropriations.

Half of the money would go to the state’s First Class Pre-K Program, while the other half would be used for grants and scholarships. The bill does not lay out any particulars for how the scholarship and grant money would be distributed.

Specifically excluded would be “any form of video lottery,” including mobile, Internet-based, monitor-based interactive games, or “any simulated casino-style game.”

The only lottery bill to ever pass both houses of the Alabama Legislature did so in 1999, but voters rejected it 54 percent to 46 percent.