Voting by Machinery

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 32, 12 September 1891, Page 4

Voting by Machinery

A Belgian engineer has recently tnade kuo * n a curious invention which lie has patented, in the form of a machine for registering . votes;' He rlaims for it absolute ' 6ecrecy, im partiality, and correctness of registration. In appearance the machine is said to resemble a piano or small j harmonium. 'The keys are a series of I electric 1 buttons, on which the voter has to press when registering his vote. A list of the candidates takes the place of music on an ordinary piano, and to each namn there is a cor-l-espouiiing button on the keyboard. "The inventor proposes to place the | photograph of each candidate over his name; so 'that' illiterate voters cannot imike a mistake. In the interior of the machine is the register which shows .the numbers registered in uuits,' tens,' hundreds, and thousands. These c'ah'not he seen without unlocking the machine, and cannot be tampered with. Various ingenious contrivances have been invented to prevent fraud. If the number of candidates be five, the machine is adjusted saas to register five only until the 'voter! leaves the' platform in front of the machine. It is also impossible to register two votes by pressing the famefiutton, or knob, twice. To do "So the voter must descend from the platform and allow some seconds to elapse. There is also a key, orknob, which registers blank, so that the voter may register blank if he so desires, without being the wiser. To know the result of voting,' the machine has -oniy^ to be unlocked, when the total votes for each candidate is seen at a glance. This of itself would be a ~d ecided gain, as the counting: of the votes at elections is always a tiresome -and thankless task.