Doing your civic duty could become much more lucrative under an initiative filed Wednesday that seeks to turn Arizona elections into a statewide game of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

The initiative, filed by former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Osterloh of Tucson, would reward one lucky voter with $1 million from the state Lottery every two years.

"We're rewarding patriotism," said Osterloh, who's aiming for the November 2004 ballot. "The idea behind this is to increase voter participation from well below 50 percent to above 90 percent."

Osterloh's group, Arizonans for Voter Rewards and Education Funding, also filed a second initiative that would force the Legislature to pour nearly $2 billion more into the public school system to bring per-pupil education spending up to the national average. Arizona ranked 49th in spending in the most recent Education Week "Quality Counts" ranking at $5,487 per pupil. The initiative does not indicate how lawmakers should pay for a spending increase to the national average of $7,524 per student.

"We are leaving that to the Legislature," Osterloh said. "We are mandating them to do what they should be doing in the first place. They could easily fund this by getting rid of all the tax exemptions, loopholes and tax cuts for rich campaign contributors who got them into office in the first place."

Legislative leaders say mandating another $2 billion in spending without a funding source is irresponsible.

About two-thirds of the Legislature's $6.4 billion is already given over to voter- and federal-mandated spending on health care and education.

Senate President Ken Bennett said per-pupil spending is a poor indicator of student performance and that Arizona ranks closer to the middle of the pack on teacher salaries and first in spending on school construction.

"It's oversimplistic, and I do suspect the reliability of the numbers," said Bennett, R-Prescott.