This proposal is the final component of a larger study of mechanical-lever voting machines (1888-1926) in New York State, which took an early and decisive national lead in the adoption of voting machines. Specifically, it proposes a summer of archival research to document the evolution of ballot designs as they were implemented through the medium of new voting machine technologies in selected New York state localities. Evidence from the patent record indicates that the New York-based company that designed and sold these machines throughout New York (later called Automatic Voting Machines) was responsive to the interests of the national political parties, who advocated a ballot design (the "pure party column") that favored their interests. These machines included a "party lever" or "party knob" that enabled straight-party-ticket voting. This is quite surprising considering that the company's founder, Jacob Myers, styled himself as a political reformer; at the time, reformers were pressing for ballot designs that prevented, or at least did not encourage, straight-party-ticket voting. By chronicling the sequence of designs that were actually sold to New York election districts, as well as by examining the archival record for evidence of correspondence or interaction between AVM and state-level politicians, this study seeks to understand how state politicians affiliated with national political elites helped to shape the first generation of voting machine technology.
Intellectual merit. The proposed research is the last component of the first major study of first-generation voting machines using contextual history of technology methods. It promises to: (1) shed light on a continuing debate among historians regarding whether late nineteenth-century ballot reforms were driven by pre-Progressive populist reformers or national party elites; (2) improve our understanding of the co-production of election technology within a broader setting that includes political interests; and (3) develop a broader theoretical approach to the scholarly understanding of ballot design in which technological implementation cannot be ignored.
Broader impact. This study should be understood as the final component of an ongoing, broader research project that chronicles the deployment of voting machines throughout this early adopter state, including New York City, where the Election Board had strongly opposed (but unsuccessfully) opposed the use of these machines. I analyze this confrontation as a technological drama, a culture-creating conflict in which the contestants' rhetoric draws deeply from their culture's fundamental values while, at the same time, emphasizing sharply contrasting views of a new technology's implications. In the nationally observed war of rhetoric leading up to the 1926 election, voting machine backers saw the technology as the only answer to electoral fraud, which was assumed to be rampant in New York City. For the New York City Election Board and its supporters, the machines represented an assault on the community's ability to ensure the right of the people to have their votes properly counted -- a right that could only be guaranteed by human oversight of the election process and human scrutiny of ballots in order to determine the voter's intention. There is compelling evidence to suggest that these contrasting views of voting technology continue to characterize the fundamental and divisive disagreements among Americans concerning today's new voting technologies. By describing for the first time how these views were initially shaped, this study promises to place today's debate in a broader and illuminating context -- especially because, after a smoothly run 1926 election, the matter was resolved to the satisfaction of both parties, and mechanical-lever voting machine use subsequently spread throughout the country without controversy. The debate was not reopened until 2000, in the aftermath of the Florida election debacle. By showing how the events of 1926 restored voter confidence in New York's election system, this study promises to help election officials and administrators to better understand not only why voters lose faith in technology-driven election processes, but what is more, how that faith can be restored.
