A voting machine is a machine used to record votes in an
election
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...
without paper. The first voting machines were mechanical but it is increasingly more common to use ''
electronic voting machine
An electronic voting machine is a voting machine based on electronics.
Two main technologies exist: '' optical scanning'' and '' direct recording'' (DRE).
Optical scanning
In an optical scan voting system, or marksense, each voter's choices ...
s''. Traditionally, a voting machine has been defined by its mechanism, and whether the system tallies votes at each voting location, or centrally. Voting machines should not be confused with
tabulating machine
The tabulating machine was an electromechanical machine designed to assist in summarizing information stored on punched cards. Invented by Herman Hollerith, the machine was developed to help process data for the 1890 U.S. Census. Later models w ...
s, which count votes done by paper
ballot
A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in secret voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16t ...
.
Voting machines differ in usability, security, cost, speed, accuracy, and ability of the public to oversee elections. Machines may be more or less accessible to voters with different disabilities.
Tallies are simplest in
parliamentary system
A parliamentary system, or parliamentarian democracy, is a system of democratic governance of a state (or subordinate entity) where the executive derives its democratic legitimacy from its ability to command the support ("confidence") of the ...
s where just one choice is on the ballot, and these are often tallied manually. In other political systems where many choices are on the same ballot, tallies are often done by machines to give faster results.
Historical machines
In
ancient Athens
Athens is one of the oldest named cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for perhaps 5,000 years. Situated in southern Europe, Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece in the first millennium BC, and its cultural achieve ...
(5th and 4th centuries BCE) voting was done by different colored pebbles deposited in urns, and later by bronze markers created by the state and officially stamped. This procedure served for elected positions, jury procedures, and ostracisms. The first use of paper ballots was in Rome in 139 BCE, and their first use in the United States was in 1629 to select a pastor for the Salem Church.
Mechanical voting
Balls
The first major proposal for the use of voting machines came from the
Chartists
Chartism was a working-class movement for political reform in the United Kingdom that erupted from 1838 to 1857 and was strongest in 1839, 1842 and 1848. It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement, w ...
in the United Kingdom in 1838. Among the radical reforms called for in ''The People's Charter'' were
universal suffrage
Universal suffrage (also called universal franchise, general suffrage, and common suffrage of the common man) gives the right to vote to all adult citizens, regardless of wealth, income, gender, social status, race, ethnicity, or political stanc ...
and voting by
secret ballot
The secret ballot, also known as the Australian ballot, is a voting method in which a voter's identity in an election or a referendum is anonymous. This forestalls attempts to influence the voter by intimidation, blackmailing, and potential vote ...
. This required major changes in the conduct of elections, and as responsible reformers, the Chartists not only demanded reforms but described how to accomplish them, publishing ''Schedule A'', a description of how to run a polling place, and ''Schedule B'', a description of a voting machine to be used in such a polling place.
The Chartist voting machine, attributed to Benjamin Jolly of 19 York Street in
Bath
Bath may refer to:
* Bathing, immersion in a fluid
** Bathtub, a large open container for water, in which a person may wash their body
** Public bathing, a public place where people bathe
* Thermae, ancient Roman public bathing facilities
Plac ...
, allowed each voter to cast one vote in a single race. This matched the requirements of a British parliamentary election. Each voter was to cast his vote by dropping a brass ball into the appropriate hole in the top of the machine by the candidate's name. Each voter could only vote once because each voter was given just one brass ball. The ball advanced a clockwork counter for the corresponding candidate as it passed through the machine, and then fell out the front where it could be given to the next voter.
Buttons
In 1875, Henry Spratt of
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
received a U.S. patent for a voting machine that presented the ballot as an array of push buttons, one per candidate. Spratt's machine was designed for a typical British election with a single
plurality race on the ballot.
In 1881, Anthony Beranek of
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
patented the first voting machine appropriate for use in a general election in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. Beranek's machine presented an array of push buttons to the voter, with one row per office on the ballot, and one column per party. Interlocks behind each row prevented voting for more than one candidate per race, and an interlock with the door of the voting booth reset the machine for the next voter as each voter left the booth.
Tokens
The psephograph was patented by Italian inventor Eugenio Boggiano in 1907. It worked by dropping a metal token into one of several labeled slots. The psephograph would automatically tally the total tokens deposited in each slot. The psephograph was first used in a theatre in Rome, where it was used to gauge audience reception to a play: "good", "bad", or "indifferent".
Analog computers
Lenna Winslow's 1910 voting machine was designed to offer all the questions on the ballot to men and only some to women because women often had
partial suffrage, e.g. being allowed to vote on issues but not candidates. The machine had two doors, one marked "Gents" and the other marked "Ladies". The door used to enter the voting booth would activate a series of levers and switches to display the full ballot for men and the partial ballot for women.
Dials
By July 1936,
IBM had mechanized voting and ballot tabulation for
single transferable vote
Single transferable vote (STV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which voters cast a single vote in the form of a ranked-choice ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vote may be transferred according to alternate p ...
elections. Using a series of dials, the voter could record up to twenty ranked preferences to a
punched card
A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
, one preference at a time. Write-in votes were permitted. The machine prevented a voter from
spoiling their ballot by skipping rankings and by giving the same ranking to more than one candidate. A standard punched-card counting machine would tabulate ballots at a rate of 400 per minute.
Levers
Lever machines were commonly used in the United States until the 1990s. In 1889,
Jacob H. Myers of
Rochester, New York
Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...
, received a patent for a voting machine that was based on Beranek's 1881 push button machine. This machine saw its first use in
Lockport, New York
Lockport is both a city and the Lockport (town), New York, town that surrounds it in Niagara County, New York, Niagara County, New York (state), New York. The city is the Niagara county seat, with a population of 21,165 according to 2010 census ...
, in 1892. In 1894, Sylvanus Davis added a straight-party lever and significantly simplified the interlocking mechanism used to enforce the vote-for-one rule in each race. By 1899, Alfred Gillespie introduced several refinements. It was Gillespie who replaced the heavy metal voting booth with a curtain that was linked to the cast-vote lever, and Gillespie introduced the lever by each candidate name that was turned to point to that name in order to cast a vote for that candidate. Inside the machine, Gillespie worked out how to make the machine programmable so that it could support races in which voters were allowed to vote for, for example, 3 out of 5 candidates.
On December 14, 1900, the U.S. Standard Voting Machine Company was formed, with Alfred Gillespie as one of its directors, to combine the companies that held the Myers, Davis, and Gillespie patents. By the 1920s, this company (under various names) had a monopoly on voting machines, until, in 1936,
Samuel and Ransom Shoup obtained a patent for a competing voting machine. By 1934, about a sixth of all presidential ballots were being cast on mechanical voting machines, essentially all made by the same manufacturer.
Commonly, a voter enters the machine and pulls a lever to close the curtain, thus unlocking the voting levers. The voter then makes his or her selection from an array of small voting levers denoting the appropriate candidates or measures. The machine is configured to prevent overvotes by locking out other candidates when one candidate's lever is turned down. When the voter is finished, a lever is pulled which opens the curtain and increments the appropriate counters for each candidate and measure. At the close of the election, the results are hand copied by the precinct officer, although some machines could automatically print the totals.
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
was the last state to stop using these machines, under court order, by the fall of 2009.
Punched card voting
Punched card
A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
systems employ a card (or cards) and a small clipboard-sized device for recording votes. Voters punch holes in the cards with a
ballot marking device
A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in secret voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16t ...
. Typical ballot marking devices carry a ballot label that identifies the candidates or issues associated with each punching position on the card, although in some cases, the names and issues are printed directly on the card. After voting, the voter may place the ballot in a ballot box, or the ballot may be fed into a computer vote tabulating device at the precinct.
The idea of voting by punching holes on paper or cards originated in the 1890s and inventors continued to explore this in the years that followed.
By the late 1890s
John McTammany's voting machine was used widely in several states. In this machine, votes were recorded by punching holes in a roll of paper comparable to those used in
player piano
A player piano (also known as a pianola) is a self-playing piano containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism, that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper or metallic rolls, with more modern i ...
s, and then tabulated after the polls closed using a
pneumatic
Pneumatics (from Greek ‘wind, breath’) is a branch of engineering that makes use of gas or pressurized air.
Pneumatic systems used in Industrial sector, industry are commonly powered by compressed air or compressed inert gases. A central ...
mechanism.
Punched-card voting was proposed occasionally in the mid-20th century, but the first major success for punched-card voting came in 1965, with Joseph P. Harris' development of the Votomatic punched-card system. This was based on IBM's
Port-A-Punch technology. Harris licensed the Votomatic to IBM. William Rouverol built the prototype system.
The Votomatic system was very successful and widely distributed. By the 1996 Presidential election, some variation of the punched card system was used by 37.3% of registered voters in the United States.
Votomatic style systems and punched cards received considerable notoriety in 2000 when their uneven use in Florida was alleged to have
affected the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. The
Help America Vote Act
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (), or HAVA, is a United States federal law which passed in the House 357-48 and 92-2 in the Senate and was signed into law by President Bush on October 29, 2002.United States Department of Justice Civil Rights ...
of 2002 "effectively banned pre-scored punched card ballots."
Votomatics were "last used in 2 counties in Idaho in the
2014 General Election".
Current voting machines
Optical scan (marksense)
Direct-recording electronic (DRE)
Location of tallying
Optical scans can be done either at the place of voting,"''precinct''", or in another location. DRE machines always tally at the precinct.
Precinct-count voting system
A precinct-count voting system is a voting system that tallies ballots at the polling place. Precinct-count machines typically analyze ballots as they are cast. This approach allows for voters to be notified of voting errors such as
overvote
An overvote occurs when one votes for more than the maximum number of selections allowed in a contest. The result is a spoiled vote which is not included in the final tally.
One example of an overvote would be voting for two candidates in a single ...
s and can prevent
spoilt vote
In voting, a ballot is considered spoilt, spoiled, void, null, informal, invalid or stray if a law declares or an election authority determines that it is invalid and thus not included in the vote count. This may occur accidentally or deliberat ...
s. After the voter has a chance to correct any errors, the precinct-count machine tallies that ballot. Vote totals are made public only after the close of polling. DREs and precinct scanners have electronic storage of the vote tallies and may transmit results to a central location over public telecommunication networks.
Central-count voting system
![ES&S DS 450](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/ES%26S_DS_450.jpg)
A central count voting system is a voting system that tallies ballots from multiple precincts at a central location. Central count systems are also commonly used to process
absentee ballot
An absentee ballot is a vote cast by someone who is unable or unwilling to attend the official polling station to which the voter is normally allocated. Methods include voting at a different location, postal voting, proxy voting and online votin ...
s.
Central counting can be done by hand, and in some jurisdictions, central counting is done using the same type of voting machine deployed at polling places, but since the introduction of the Votomatic punched-card voting system and the Norden Electronic Vote Tallying System in the 1960s, high speed ballot tabulators have been in widespread use, particularly in large metropolitan jurisdictions. Today, commodity high-speed scanners sometimes serve this purpose, but special-purpose ballot scanners are also available that incorporate sorting mechanisms to separate tallied ballots from those requiring human interpretation.
[Douglas W. Jones and Barbara Simons, Broken Ballots, CSLI Publications, 2012; see Section 4.1 Central-Count Machines, pages 64-65, and Figure 21, page 73.]
Voted ballots are typically placed into secure
ballot boxes at the polling place. Stored ballots and/or Precinct Counts are transported or transmitted to a central counting location. The system produces a printed report of the vote count, and may produce a report stored on electronic media suitable for
broadcasting
Broadcasting is the distribution (business), distribution of sound, audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio ...
, or release on the Internet.
Gallery
File:Winvote arlington.jpg, The Advanced Voting Solutions WINvote voting machine in Arlington County, Virginia
Arlington County is a County (United States), county in the Virginia, Commonwealth of Virginia. The county is situated in Northern Virginia on the southwestern bank of the Potomac River directly across from the Washington, D.C., District of Co ...
.
File:MDvotingmachine.jpg, A Diebold
Diebold Nixdorf is an American multinational financial and retail technology company that specializes in the sale, manufacture, installation and service of self-service transaction systems (such as ATMs and currency processing systems), point- ...
DRE voting machine used in Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...
2004.
File:TallyVoting DRE.png, The TallyVoting Tally1 DRE in testing in Washington, DC
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...
.
File:IVotronic img 3452.jpg, ES&S iVotronic DRE Voting machine used in Issy-les-Moulineaux
Issy-les-Moulineaux () is a commune in the southwestern suburban area of Paris, France, lying on the left bank of the river Seine. Its citizens are called ''Isséens'' in French. It is one of Paris' entrances and is located from Notre-Dame Cath ...
in 2007 French presidential election
Presidential elections in France, Presidential elections were held in France on 21 and 22 April 2007 to elect the successor to Jacques Chirac as President of the French Republic, president of France (and ''ex officio'' Co-Prince of Andorra) for ...
in 2007.
File:Topvoter2.jpg, ISG TopVoter, a voting machine specifically designed for disabled voters.
File:Shouptronic.jpg, The Shouptronic 1242 DRE voting machine, later sold as the Danaher ElecTronic 1242.
File:Standardvotingmachine.jpg, A voting machine designed by Alfred J. Gillespie and marketed by the Standard Voting Machine Company of Rochester, New York
Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...
from the late 1890s.
File:Voting machine lever.jpg, A mechanical lever voting machine still being used in 2008 in Kingston, New York
Kingston is a Administrative divisions of New York#City, city in and the county seat of Ulster County, New York, United States. It is north of New York City and south of Albany, New York, Albany. The city's metropolitan area is grouped with t ...
.
File:Voting machine Denver Colorado 1912.JPG, McTammany player-piano roll voting machine, 1912.
File:Electronicvotingmachinewithbucu.jpg, DRE voting machine
A DRE voting machine, or direct-recording electronic voting machine, records votes by means of a ballot display provided with mechanical or electro-optical components that can be activated by the voter. These are typically buttons or a touchscr ...
used in all major Indian elections with its separate ballot unit and control unit.
File:EVM VVPAT.jpg, DRE voting machine
A DRE voting machine, or direct-recording electronic voting machine, records votes by means of a ballot display provided with mechanical or electro-optical components that can be activated by the voter. These are typically buttons or a touchscr ...
used in all major Indian elections with its separate ballot unit and VVPAT
Voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) or verified paper record (VPR) is a method of providing feedback to voters using a ballotless voting system. A VVPAT is intended as an independent verification system for voting machines designed to allow ...
unit.
See also
*
INEC card reader
The INEC card reader is a portable electronic voting authentication device configured to read only the Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) issued by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Nigeria.
The card reader was designed for the accr ...
*
ACCURATE
Accuracy and precision are two measures of '' observational error''.
''Accuracy'' is how close a given set of measurements ( observations or readings) are to their ''true value'', while ''precision'' is how close the measurements are to each ot ...
*
Ballot
A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in secret voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16t ...
*
Election ink
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operated ...
*
Brazilian voting machine
*
Electoral system
An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and Referendum, referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political ...
*
Electronic voting
Electronic voting (also known as e-voting) is voting that uses electronic means to either aid or take care of casting and counting ballots.
Depending on the particular implementation, e-voting may use standalone ''electronic voting machines'' ( ...
*
Indian voting machines
Electronic voting is the standard means of conducting elections using Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in India. The system was developed and tested by the state-owned Electronics Corporation of India and Bharat Electronics in the 1990s. The ...
*
Open Voting Consortium The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is a non-profit advocacy group dedicated to the development, maintenance, and delivery of trustable and open voting systems for use in public elections.
OVC was founded in December 12, 2003 by Alan Dechert, Dr. Arth ...
*
Postal voting
Postal voting is voting in an election where ballot papers are distributed to electors (and typically returned) by Mail, post, in contrast to electors voting in person at a polling place, polling station or electronically via an electronic voti ...
*
Safevote
Safevote Inc. is a U.S. company with proprietary voting technology and global internet election experience. Safevote is privately held, with the majority of capital in the U.S. Safevote's voting technology has been used with the internet, offline, ...
*
Security seal
Security seals are tamper-evident mechanisms that seal valuable material in a room, cabinet, vehicle, or other storage facility. One common use is to seal cargo in transit shipping containers in a way that provides tamper evidence and some lev ...
*
Vote counting system
Vote counting is the process of counting votes in an election. It can be done manually or by machines. In the United States, the compilation of election returns and validation of the outcome that forms the basis of the official results is call ...
*
Voting system
An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections ma ...
References
External links
Election administration
Election Assistance CommissionVote.NIST.gov– The
National Institute of Standards and Technology
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
Help America Vote Act
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (), or HAVA, is a United States federal law which passed in the House 357-48 and 92-2 in the Senate and was signed into law by President Bush on October 29, 2002.United States Department of Justice Civil Rights ...
page.
Informational
The Election Technology Library research list– A comprehensive list of research relating to technology use in elections.
E-Voting informationfro
ACE ProjectAEI-Brookings Election Reform Project*
*
Selker, Tedbr>
Scientific American Magazine Fixing the VoteOctober 2004
The Machinery of Democracy: Voting System Security, Accessibility, Usability, and Costfro
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of LawWho's who in election technology
Caltech/ MIT Voting Technology ProjectBlack Box Voting book*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Voting Machine
Election technology
Articles containing video clips
fr:Vote électronique