Lever pull machines such as the Myers Automated Booth were the primary mechanized voting devices in the United States for the first half of the twentieth century. In the lever pull method, the voter enters a curtained booth and votes by pressing a lever for each candidate or subject he chooses. When the voter pulls a lever to open a curtain upon exit, it causes votes to be recorded by a mechanical counter behind each voting lever and the levers to be automatically reset.2 Because of its simple design, third party ballot interpretation in a lever pull machine is virtually nonexistant. An interesting note is that by the mid-1900s, lever pull machines had been equipped with a mechanism that prevented voters from choosing more than one candidate in each race.3 The machines were extremely expensive during the early time of their use, each costing the equivalent to $12,000 today.4 Lever pull machines are still widely used, even though their production stopped in 1982.5 Advantages of lever pull machines are that votes are automatically tabulated and that voters can easily correct voting mistakes while still in the booth.6
Punch Card Machines
There are several antecedents to the punch card machines that caused Florida so much trouble in November 2000. Punch card technology was first used by an early nineteenth century French inventor named Joseph-Marie Jacquard to control the movements of his textile looms.7 Herman Hollerith, an American, later adapted the technology for information processing purposes at the Baltimore Board of Health.8 Hollerith's punch cards were first officially used to collect information for the 1890 national census.9 In 1896, Hollerith founded the World Tabulation Corporation, which later became known as IBM.10
For the next half-century, Americans used
punch cards in a wide array of areas, including insurance records,
railroads companies, libraries, and payrolls.11
Joseph P. Harris, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley,
adapted the punch card for voting in the 1960s with the help of William
Rouveral, an engineering professor.12
Simultaneously, Martin A. Coyle was pairing punch cards with new computer
technology for local elections in Ohio.13
IBM purchased patent rights to Harris's punch card device in 1965,
calling it the IBM Votomatic.14
Ironically, radical 1960s student protesters at UC-Berkeley adopted
the punch card as a symbol for the depersonalization of American society,
wearing signs that read "I am UC student. Please don't bend,
fold, spindle, or mutilate me."15
The punch card machine was first used officially in 1965 in Fulton
and DeKalb Counties, Georgia.16
The punch card required the use of a stylus to punch out a numbered
chad which corresponds to a specific candidate or issue. Advantages
of the punch card method is the low amount of initial investment, but the
disadvantages of these machines are more often expressed. Instructions
for use of the punch card ballot are often complex, and problems such as
"hanging" or "pregnant" chads spark debates over voter intent. As
noted by Douglas Jones, Associate Professor of Computer Sciences at the University
of Iowa and Chairman of the Iowa Board of Examiners for Voting Machines and
Electronic Voting Systems, problems often occur with the ballot when it
is put through the reading machine. Although punch card machines are
extremely fallible, they account for almost forty percent of voting technologies
used across the U.S. today.17Optical Scan Ballots
Optical Scan or "marksense" ballots combine paper and electric methods. An optical scan ballot is a sheet of paper listing candidate names which voters mark with a special fluorescent ink pen, stamping device, or graphite stylus in a private booth.18 The voter then drops his marked sheet into the ballot box. The paper is processed by an electronic ballot reader which records the image of the marked ballot onto a computer memory device.19 Marksense ballots evolved out of standardized testing method. In fact, the first optical scan voting system was developed from technology rights bought by the Westinghouse Learning Corporation in 1968 from Professor E.F. Lindquist of the University of Iowa, who developed the ACT standardized test.20 The first optical scan machine was officially used in a California election in 1962. An advantage of the optical scan method is its relative ease of use for voters as compared to th punch card ballot.21
Future
In its 2002 Voting Systems Standards publication, the Federal Election Commission notes that the the "rigid dichotomies" between different voting systems are becoming increasingly blurred as the nation continues through the Information Age.22 Computers are increasingly being used to record and transmit votes, and there are some advocates for online voting. Others seems to take a technological step backwards by promoting voting by mail and by phone. One technology that has a good chance of becoming more prevalent is Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting. The most common type of DRE machine features a touchscreen on which voters cast their decision. This system is extremely user-friendly, private, and automatically records votes.23