ELECTiON DAY!!!

It has taken forever for this day to get here.



http://americanhistory.si.edu/vote/index.html

Wooden ballot box with marbles

The term ballot is derived from the Italian ballotta, meaning "little ball." This ballot box was not used in a U.S. election. It was used by members of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of Washington, D.C., a social club.

Ballot, Free Soil ticket

Maryland Free Soil party ticket, 1848

Puck Illustration

"American Invention for Blowing Up Bosses," Puck, November 16, 1881

Glass globe ballot jar

Like the slot-top wooden ballot box, this 1884 box with a glass chamber is typical of the devices used to secure single party tickets. The image of the glass ballot box became a symbol of democratic self-government.

Stuffer's ballot box

Some ballot boxes actually helped commit outright fraud. This dishonest "stuffer's ballot box," featured in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper in 1856, concealed a sliding false bottom and side. These panels hid party ticket ballots, which were added to legitimate ballots deposited by voters-all without tampering with the lock.

Thomas Nast cartoon 

Thomas Nast's "The Coming Crown," Harper's Weekly, May 15, 1880

Paste pot and paster ballot

Many state election laws allowed voters to modify party tickets. Voters could "split" their ticket by scratching out the name of one candidate and writing in another, or by gluing on a strip of paper (called a paster) printed with the name of yet another person.

Republican poll watcher badge

The parties employed poll watchers to observe Election Day voting procedures. This New York poll watcher's badge is from 1910.

Acme voting machine

Innovations in ballot box design were intended to ensure an honest vote. The Acme, an improvement upon the open-slot box, has a tabulator activated by a lever mechanism that releases the ballot into the box. The Acme was manufactured in Bridgewater, Connecticut, about 1880.

Voting instructions poster

Prominently placed in the voting booth, ballot marking instructions helped voters make their votes count. This poster was used in Cleveland, Ohio, in the election of 1936.

 Ballot markers

Blanket ballots and voting booths made voting more private because observers could not see which party a voter was supporting. Handwritten or hand-marked paper ballots not counted by machines are used in 1.5 percent of the United States today. These crayon ballot markers date to 1908.

Blanket Ballot

Ballot Circular

Developed in South Australia in the 1850s, the blanket ballot—listing all candidates for office regardless of party—was gradually adopted in the United States after 1888. The voter marked the ballot in the privacy of a voting booth, sometimes guided by party symbols—like this eagle guarding the ballot box.

Map of states and territories in which women vote

The admission of western territories as new states advanced the right of women to vote. These territories had less rigid social customs, and were anxious to acquire the number of voting residents needed to meet statehood requirements. In 1913 women voted in Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado. Not until the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 did women win the right to vote in the United States as a whole.

Courtesy Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University

Popular Science Monthly cover

By 1920 the gear-and-lever voting machine had become the official voting method in New York, Minnesota, California, Connecticut, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Utah, Colorado, Montana, Illinois, Washington, Massachusetts, and Kansas. The voting machine, pictured in Popular Science Monthly with a contemplative voter, became a symbol of good government and progressive reform.

Standard voting machine

This voting machine was patented by inventor Alfred J. Gillespie and manufactured by the Standard Voting Machine Company of Rochester, New York, in the late 1890s. It was the first to use a voter-activated mechanism that drew a privacy curtain around the voter and simultaneously unlocked the machine's levers for voting. In 1898, Gillespie and inventor Jacob Myers, whose patents informed Gillespie's work, organized a company that became Automatic Voting Machine Company. Myers gave the first demonstration of a voting machine in an 1892 Lockport, New York, town election.

Instructional model voting machine

Models like this one acquainted voters with the operational features of the actual machine. This facsimile machine was last used in the 1944 presidential election between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Thomas E. Dewey.