Security can be provided for lottery tickets having data printed thereon
in a bar code or other machine readable media by covering only a portion
of the bar code with a scratch-off material. Removing the scratch-off
material, or in some cases only a portion of the scratch-off material,
can permit machine validation of the lottery tickets. For bar codes
having a specified level of redundancy, it is desirable to cover at least
enough of the bar code to prevent the machine reading of ticket
validation data encoded in the bar code. Also, a lottery ticket can
include a bar code printed on the ticket having both inventory and
validation data along with a bar code printed on the front of the ticket
including the validation data. All or part of the bar code printed on the
front of the ticket can be covered by a scratch-off material. Also, the
validation and redemption process can be expedited by having a player
ticket checker read a ticket identifier printed on the lottery ticket so
that this information can be checked and automatically entered in an
agent terminal.