IMPROVED BALLOT VOTING APPARATUS
Year: 1871

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Hubert Ellis Smith at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
13th March 1871.
I, HUBERT ELLIS SMITH, of the Town and County of Hereford, do
hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVED BALLOT
VOTING APPARATUS," to be as follows:-
The object of my Invention is to enable electors to register their
votes secretly, or by means of the ballot, for which purpose I employ
an oblong table surrounded by a partition of sufficient height to
prevent observation. On the surface of this table are a series of cups,
in which the balloting balls are to be deposited by the electors. The
cups are open at bottom through the table top and each is just large
enough to hold only one balloting ball at a time, the openings in all the
cups being closed by a moveable or sliding plate working in guides on
the under side of the table top. In this plate there are a series of holes

page_text: or openings corresponding to the number of cups in the table and the
plate may be shifted to-and-fro by means of a lever worked by an
attendant (on the exit of a voter) in order to make the openings in
the plate coincide with the openings in the bottoms of the cups, and
thus allow the balls to descend through the table top into channels
beneath, by which they are respectively conducted into a suitable box
or receptacle. Each ball in passing through its channel or shoot from
the cup through its corresponding channel or shoot to the box, comes
in contact with, and actuates a series of cog wheels or ordinary
"tell-
tale mechanism, by which the passage of each ball is registered on
an index corresponding to the cup in which the ball is deposited and
placed in front of the apparatus. The faces of these indexes are kept
closed and only opened at definite intervals to ascertain the number of
"
votes for each candidate.
The mode of working the apparatus is as follows:-An elector on
entering the chamber in which the voting apparatus is placed passes
to the table, and at the same time an attendant places the ballot balls
in a shoot which conducts them to a basin at the centre of the table.
The elector then places a ball in the cup corresponding to the name
or color of the candidate for whom he desires to vote, and passes out.
The ball remains in the cup till the elector has passed out of the
room, when the sliding plate is moved by an attendant by means of
a lever handle, and the cups being thereby opened the ball descends
and in its passage actuates an ordinary tell-tale, which records the
vote on one of the closed indexes, as before mentioned, and then passes
on into the common box or receptacle in front of the apparatus, the
ball, if any, left in the central basin falling at the same time through
a similar opening in the sliding plate. The latter is returned to the
normal or closed position by means of a spring, after the balls have
passed through the cups. Should the elector wish to split his votes
he places a ball in each of any two cups, or should he desire to remain
neutral he has simply to allow the balls to remain in the central basin;
in any case they will fall into the common receptacle. The opening
of the cups may be effected automatically, if desired, by connecting the
lever before referred to with the door at which the elector passes out.
The top surface of the table is made slightly concave or inclined in
order that a ball dropped on any part of the table may roll into the
'central basin.

page_text: For the convenience of blind persons I propose placing immediately
in front of the different cups a square, circular, triangular, or other
projection, to enable such persons to distinguish the cups in which they
wish to deposit their votes.