NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The Tennessee Legislature is talking about stopping computer lottery draws after a 2007 computer programming error — that went undetected until Aug. 20 — that did not allow anyone who played repeated digits from winning, the Lottery Post.com reports.

The Tennessee Lottery is seeking almost $1.5 million in damages from Smartplay, the system’s designer, and Gaming Laboratories, the company that certified the system.

Lawmakers want the state to revert to ping-pong balls to choose the Cash 3 and Cash 4 winners. House Minority Leader Jason Mumpower said players have lost confidence in the lottery because of the error and one way to rebuild trust is to pick balls with numbers on them. “In my 12 years of service in the House of Representatives, the only other issue I’ve heard this much about is a state income tax,” he said.

A state audit released last month revealed that last year’s error could have been prevented, but the lottery wasn’t equipped to find such a mistake. “Over 2 million tickets were sold that were worthless, but only 700,000 of those were able to be refunded because people had thrown their tickets away, so we had Tennesseans that lost money,” said Mumpower.

Lottery officials said reverting to selecting ping-pong balls would cost $5 million, but that figure was arrived at mostly by TV costs associated with broadcasting the drawings. Tennessee Lottery CEO Rebecca Hargrove did not explore the cost of alternative broadcast methods, such as Web-based broadcasts, which are less costly than television.