My first voting experience was the presidential election of 1988…and I was three years old. My daycare provider brought me, my infant brother, and her young daughter to the polls and a photographer from my hometown’s newspaper snapped a photo of us. I was not even tall enough to be concealed by the privacy curtain and was looking up in awe, probably mesmerized by the curtain and the lever. (My mom saved the photo, but alas could not find it in time for this blog.)
Since that first time, now being of age to actually vote, I’ve performed my democratic privilege and duty three times—via gear and lever machine, absentee ballot, and paper ballot machine. However, I don’t think I’ve been awed by how I was voting, as opposed to the meaning behind my vote, since that first time as a toddler.
But I’ve been thinking a lot about the technology I’ve voted with recently because this year’s New Perspectives on Invention and Innovation symposium, “Political Machines,” is examining the technology that has been used—and will be used—during campaigns and elections. (Though I actually had to call the DC Board of Elections and Ethics because I couldn’t remember how I voted in 2008. I was just excited to be voting in person for president for the first time!)
As you might imagine, the National Museum of American History has wonderful collections documenting the history of voting. In fact, an exhibition titled Vote! The Machinery of Democracy was on view between June 2004 and February 2005. Fortunately, that exhibition is still available online. Here I’ve pulled out just a few of the voting technologies and machines that Vote! explores.
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- The term ballot is derived from the Italian ballotta, meaning “little ball.” This ballot box was not used in a U.S. election. It was used by members of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of Washington, D.C., a social club.
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- Ballot, Maryland Free Soil party ticket, 1848.
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- Paper Ballot, Union (Republican Party) presidential ticket, Ohio, 1864.
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- Paper ballot. D.C. Board of Elections, 1964. District of Columbia official ballot, November 3, 1964.
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- Some ballot boxes actually helped commit outright fraud. This dishonest “stuffer’s ballot box,” featured in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in 1856, concealed a sliding false bottom and side. These panels hid party ticket ballots, which were added to legitimate ballots deposited by voters—all without tampering with the lock.
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- Poll books recorded the names of soldiers who cast absentee ballots for presidential electors during the Civil War. Image: These poll books recorded the names of Crawford County, Pennsylvania, soldiers.
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- Innovations in ballot box design were intended to ensure an honest vote. The Acme, an improvement upon the open-slot box, has a tabulator activated by a lever mechanism that releases the ballot into the box. The Acme was manufactured in Bridgewater, Conn., about 1880.
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- Blanket ballots and voting booths made voting more private because observers could not see which party a voter was supporting. Handwritten or hand-marked paper ballots not counted by machines are used in 1.5 percent of the US today. These crayon ballot markers date to 1908.
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- The invention of a practical voting machine was the preoccupation of reformers in the late 19th century. The operating features of these gear-and-lever machines followed contemporary trends in ballot design, notably the tabular layout of the blanket ballot and the private curtained booth. State and local government officials justified investments in voting machines by noting the increasing length and complexity of ballots with multiple candidates and referenda, and, in the 1920s, the doubling of electorates with the enfranchisement of women. This gear and lever voting machine was patented by inventor Alfred J. Gillespie and manufactured by the Standard Voting Machine Company of Rochester, NY, in the late 1890s. It was the first to use a voter-activated mechanism that drew a privacy curtain around the voter and simultaneously unlocked the machine’s levers for voting.
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- From the late 1950s to through the early 1970s, election districts grew to include millions of potential voters as federal legislation outlawed barriers to voting. Elections specialists looked for vote recording systems that could tap the processing power of computers. Computerized vote processing offered economy and speed—an advantage in reporting election returns to an expanding electorate accustomed to the immediacy of television news. The Coyle was the first voting machine to turn a punch card into a ballot. The Coyle Voting Machines was developed by Martin A. Coyle and introduced in Butler and Greene Counties, Ohio, in 1961.
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- In the mid-1960s, the Votomatic Vote Recorder challenged and eventually won the market for voting equipment dominated by the gear-and-lever voting machine. The Votomatic features a stylus and a paginated ballot keyed to an underlying punch card. Shortly after the original patent expired in 1982, approximately half of the American electorate was voting by punch-card system.
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- The re-count of ballots in Florida during the 2000 presidential election created a debate about the reliability of punch card ballots and precipitated a national crisis of public confidence in voting systems in general. A close presidential election race, misaligned ballot cards that allowed for off-center punches, and a confusing butterfly ballot design in one Florida county, stimulated public awareness and interest in the nation’s vote-recording machinery.
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- Under the Help America Vote Act of 2002, federal funds are provided for states to purchase or lease new voting systems—typically, “optical scan” or “direct recording electronic” (DRE) systems—thus hastening the demise of the gear-and-lever voting machines and the Votomatic type punch card ballot. Today’s DRE touch-screen systems remain controversial. The absence of a paper ballot places importance upon the subtleties and security of security code. Image: Touch-screen voting demonstration, Arlington, Virginia, February 10, 2004.
