Do you remember the last time you were inside a local polling station? Maybe it was a station that had been temporarily erected inside a public school or library, or even a restaurant or a neighbor’s garage.
Perhaps you were there to cast a ballot in a municipal election. Maybe you were voting in a presidential primary election. But whatever the scenario, and wherever the location, it’s unlikely that you spent much time thinking about the intricacies of the polling place’s voting machines. And yet … maybe you should have.
Did you know, for instance, that the very first voting machine to use a lever debuted in 1892? Known as the “Myers Automatic Booth,” it was such a success that mechanical lever machines were still being used as recently as 1996.
But you’re unlikely to ever again see a lever-operated mechanical voting machine, at least outside of an antiques store. We are, after all, solidly in the Age of Electronics. And that at least partially explains why computerized voting machines—many of them complete with electronic touchscreens—have completely replaced the old mechanic models that served the country for more than a century.
If you’re over the age of 18, there’s a decent chance you’ve used a touchscreen-enabled voting machine, which is technically known as a direct-recording electronic (DRE) machine.
Only 7.7 percent of polling stations in the United States were using DRE machines in 1996, when they first came into popular use. By 2004 that number had risen to 28.9 percent. Regardless of the controversy surrounding the machines, which some voters consider highly fallible and relatively easy to hack, electronic voting is now a staple of the voting process not only in the U.S., but worldwide.