Voting by Machinery.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue III, 20 October 1891, Page 3

Voting by Machinery.

'■ Belgian engineer has recently made known a curious invention which he has patented, in the form of a machine for registering votes. do claims for it absolute secrecy, impartiality, and correctness of registration. In appearance the machine is said to resemble a piano or small harmonium. The keys are a series of electric buttons, on which the voter has to press when registering his vote A list of the candidates takes the place of the music on an ordinary piano, and to each name there is a corresponding button on the keyboard. The inventor proposes to place the. photograph of each candidate over his name, so that illiterate voters cannot make a mistake, In the interior of the njaohine i« t,ho register in units, tens, Hundreds, and. thousands, These cfiimot l>o seen without unlocking the iviachjne, and. cannot be tampered with- Various ingenious contrivance have been invented to prevent fraud, ljfthe numbevof candi' dittos be Jive tbo machine is adjusted so as to rc^Utor live only until the voter leaves the platform in front of the machine, it is abo impossible to register i\vo votes by pressing the same button, o.- kuob, twice. To do so the voter must descend from the platform nnd allow some seconds to elapse. Tlwe is also a key, or knob, to register blank, if he so desires, without anyone being the wiser. To know the result of the. voting, the machine bus only to be unlocked, when the total of votes tor each candidate is seen at a glance. This of itself would be a decided gain, as the counting of tha votes at elections is always v tiresome and thankless