Millions of Americans will vote today , and for the first meter in years , many of them will use paper ballots . For a nation that ’s develop some of the most advanced machines in the world , we ’ve had a hell of a clock time fancy out one of the most crucial .
However you vote today , take a second ( and ensure yourmachine is n’t flip your suffrage ) to consider just how massive a undertaking election are : Over a single Clarence Shepard Day Jr. , millions of Americans filter out through gymnasium , fire hall , and residential area center to vote , creating individual data points in all are analyse over the course of a few hours .
Image : AP Photo / Jamie - Andrea Yanak
It ’s a singular project of numbers and engine room , and it help to excuse why ballot is still evolving two centuries after the first American election . To get a sensory faculty of how many iterations and failure have beset voting day , await no further than the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office , which helpfully pulledsome of the more notable machines from its archives today , add , “ as Americans embrace their built-in right to vote , they ’ll have IP all around them . ”
For example , this1886 patentfor a “ conflate count mainsheet and poll parrot Word of God ” would have been used to list voters name and their decision , before the era of mechanized voting :
If you go all the way back in the USPTO ’s archives , you ’ll chance dozens of patent of invention for “ improvement to balloting boxes , ” to outfox balloting stuffers . harmonize to Richard Bensel’sThe American Ballot Box in the Mid - Nineteenth Century , deterrence was common in polling places across the rural area , where Americans would sick their votes amongst their peers .
A1874 patentinvolved a glass boxwood with a complex mechanism that would sound a GONG every time a ballot was received . Three locks with there individual key fruit were necessitate to open it , which still put sight of agency in the men of the official . It ’s hard to say whether it was ever used , but gentle to imagine the commotion it would have caused :
It was n’t until the late 1880s and early nineties that the U.S. adopted the so - phone Australian ballot , or secret vote , which give up voters privacy to make their decision and then be sick their vote — a important step towards stopping bullying at the poll parrot . A1889 patentfrom Charles Peck of Massachusetts described the intent of a Modern system for “ the voting compartment or ledge required to be used under the new legal philosophy , ” which would permit voter make their choices in public security :
But even the secret ballot has been contested . Last year in The Atlantic , Sasha Issenbergcalled for its abolitionin the font of scummy voter turnouts .
By 1881 , one Anthony . C. Beranek of Chicago had patent a “ voting apparatus . ” grant to Beranek , “ by means of this machine all fraud is foreclose and balloting - loge stuffing insufferable . ” His push - push design would go on to become one of the first balloting machine ever used in a general election .
But the machine that really caught on was a1889 designing by J.H. Myers . His aim was the first lever tumbler - based mechanics , and would become known as the Myers Automatic Booth . allot to University of Iowa professorDouglas W. Jones splendid ocular history of voting , Myers ’ lever design went on to become one of the two dominate designs for voting machines , even after they were discontinued in 1982 . He account it as a style to “ protect mechanically the elector from rascaldom , and make the process of casting the voting utterly plain , bare and hush-hush : ”
There were plenitude of new ideas that did n’t make it , though . The USTPO points outthis 1890 contraption , filed by one Kennedy Dougan of Missoula , Montana , inside of which was a scroll of ballots that would be go on by each voter . It included national mechanism “ to forbid a voter with deceitful or mischievous intention from run it . ” It ’s unclear if the system was ever used , but it certainly seems like it did n’t make it very far .
Other patent of invention submit melodic theme that still beat around today . A1899 patentfrom Alfred J. Gillespie of Rochester , N.Y. described something many of us will see today : A voting machine with a privacy - enhancing drapery .
By the sixties , computers had accede into the picture in their early pattern : Punch cards . record Joseph Harris , who patent severalsystems , like the one below , that would use a stylus to punch hollow in a card , to be tabulated later on . This designing was later bribe ( and sold ) by IBM , eventually made its way into hundreds of thousands of voting boothsunder the name VotoMatic , include theFlorida John Wilkes Booth that led to the election recount of 2000 .
Even after the era of punch notice , confusion persisted , and companies continued to press frontward with Modern voting engineering science . In 2005,IBM filed this patentfor a fully electronic political machine that would employ an cypher pickup that functions in write - only mode while you ’re voting . When voting is finished , it switches to read - only mood . “ Data recorded into the array is encrypted so that only authorize poll auditing officials can learn the raiment by decipher the contents thence via an appropriate encryption key , ” says IBM in the filing .
You could reason the Second Coming of Christ of electronics has complicated the voting process further , but it ’s also enable discoverer to look for direction to make it easygoing for Americans to vote . For object lesson , this 1996 patentfrom Roland J. Harp Jr. of Winchester , Kentucky , shows an electronic automobile that would give sight - handicapped or ignorant voter an audio presentation of the ballot — that fashion , they would n’t require service from another person .
There are thousands of other vote machine patents in the USPTO archives , and they range from queer to awful to important . Good or big , they labour home a single point : A jester - proof system for vote in a country of millions is still very much a oeuvre in progress — and will probably always be . you could check out out the balance of the office ’s own listhere .
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