Omaha daily bee., 1901-03-13
USE or rorINo MACHINES.

USE or VOTING MACHINES.
One of the studies of practical econ
omists of recent years has been how to
provide for the carrying on of general
elections safely and economically. Sew
eral elements necessarily enter into the
consideration of this question, chief
among them being how to secure an
honest ballot and fair and accurate
count the items of time and expense be-
ing given due weight in the calculation.
Various changes have been wrought in
our election laws, all of them being
more or less experimental, until of re-
cent years the ballot bill is as certain to
appear in the legislature as Is the gen
eral appropriation bill. No perfect sys-
TEN has yet been devised, nor has one
which will supply the naturally deficient
voter with the intelligence necessary to
the accurate expression of his political
preference at the polls. 1t Is the de-
sire to enable the intelligent voter to
CXpeditiously cast his ballot and to pro
from the voting places that has inspired
most of the ballot reforms of recent
years. Yet all efforts ~lt reform which
do not discard the vcnerated system of
boxes and counting, which superseded
the viva voCc vote of the earlier days,
have fallen short and we still find our
selves hampered with Il costly and cum
bersome method, which with all the
safeguards we can throw around II Is
open to manipulation and fraud. One
avenue to correct methods has opened
of late years, that of mechanical regis
tration and count of votes.
Laws authorizing the use of voting
machines have been passed by New
York, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Ohio,
Michigan, Iowa and are rapidly being
adopted in other states. In cities like
Rochester, Buffalo, Detroit and else
where the voting machine has given en-
tire satisfaction, insuring accuracy and
celerity in elections, and where intro
duced it bids fair to solve the problem.
The use of voting machines has proven
the soundness of the claim that they
reduce errors to n minimum. Another
tltlutul III tltlI luNOI 10 tut SuN luS III
the cost of an election. 1t is estimated
that by the use of voting machines in
a city like Omaha, the number of elec-
ton precincts can be cut down nearly
one-half and saving made in the ex-
pense of printing and stationery. This
would mean to the city of Omaha a re-
duction of election expenses of from
three to five thousand dollars for each
election, and would do away with the
election contests.
A bill authorizing the use of voting
machines is pending before the legisla-
ture. If it provides the safeguards to
meet the requirements of our general
election laws against illegal voting and
canvassing, and If 1t permits the elector
by use of voting machines to exercise
his full rights of suffrage under the
laws of the state. the bill should be
passed. Where the fate of an entire
party ticket, the election of governor,
a Judge of the courts or the mayor of a
city depends on few votes in "A
closely contested election, the necessity
Of providing n means of accurately de-
termining the will of the majority i'm
presses itself seriously on all citizens, ir-
respective of politics. If modern meth
ods represented by mechanical devices
can bring about this object, the voting
machine will soon take its place be-
side the telephone and typewriter as a
laborsaving machine. 1t will supplant
the Australian ballot, just as that sys-
TEN superseded the blanket ballot and
as the latter took the place of viva voce
voting in popular elections