Pictured are two early Jamestown-made voting machines. The one on the left is by the United States Voting Machine Company, made before 1900. The one on the right was made between 1900 and 1908, when the Rochester-based Standard Voting Machine Company merged with the Jamestown company to become The United States Standard Voting Machine Company. Submitted photo

November is fast approaching and with that month comes election day. Jamestown had a huge impact on elections for many decades until the 21st century and the age of electronics took over. The city did not influence the outcome of the elections but had a hand in the capturing of each vote and giving the outcome totals of each election. This was done because Jamestown was the city that manufactured the majority of the mechanical lever voting machines used in elections from 1895 through the 20th century.

Even though Thomas Edison was granted the first patent for a voting machine in 1869, it was the Myers Voting Machine first used in Lockport, N.Y., that began the switch from paper ballots to machines. Shortly after the 1892 Myers machine debut, the race was on to produce voting machines.

The manufacturing facilities for the Myers Voting Machine moved to Jamestown in 1895. The name was changed in 1898 to the United States Voting Machine Company. Rochester became the location of the Standard Voting Machine Company. The Jamestown and Rochester firms were on friendly basis and a consolidation was first considered in 1899 and became a reality in 1900. The new company was the United States Standard Voting Machine Company.

The decision to locate the manufacturing plant at the Jamestown location was decided when the Rochester firm agreed to move to Jamestown if the Jamestown firm could raise $10,000 in what was to be a very short time. Jamestown people did raise the needed amount in that very short time and the Rochester firm moved to the city.

In 1897, voting machines were legal in New York, Michigan, and Minnesota. In 1899, the United States authorized the use of voting machines in Federal elections. A campaign to convince other states to follow was made and the company increased production. In 1935, New York state passed the law that all elections in the state were to use machines. This, of course, gave a boost to sales of the locally manufactured machines.

Again in 1908, the name changed to the Empire Voting Machine Company when the United States Standard Voting Machine Company of Jamestown merged with two other voting machine companies. The Jamestown company formally changed its name in 1922 to the Automatic Registering Machine Company but in 1929 would change that name to the Automatic Voting Machine Company. There were other competing voting machine companies in the United States but the biggest competitor to the Jamestown firm was the Shoup Voting Machine Company of Philadelphia.

An internally written history of the Jamestown company offers a list of over 50 companies that at one time manufactured, or attempted to manufacture, voting machines, most of them before 1925.

During the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City, the Automatic Voting Machine that was on demonstration in the New York Pavilion was operated approximately 75,000 times without any necessary repairs. From this, they figured that an Automatic Voting Machine would have a mostly trouble free life of 35-45 years. Even though they were not manufactured after 1982, many machines would be lasting well into the 21st century. And they were able to be refurbished and put back into use for many years beyond that. But technology advanced, or at least many thought it had, and it soon became mandatory to discard the old reliable voting machines in favor of a plethora of new electronic versions which are now used for elections throughout the country.

In 1968, AVM shipped 8,300 voting machines to 35 states. There were then over 125,000 voting machines from Jamestown in use in the United States. Part of the success of the Jamestown-made voting machine was the push to educate the public on the use of the machines. Models for people to try were provided with the machines for use at public meetings and at the polling places. With the sale of the machines, the municipality received two years of instruction and help from company representatives to learn how to set up each machine for each new election.

When these machines were first introduced, it was a new technology which differed greatly from the previously used paper ballot. In 1897, the Jamestown Journal reported that one local man refused to use the machine because “he had never yet voted a ticket without seeing it go into the ballot box, and he did not propose to use the machine and run the risk of having it refuse to register his choice.”

Rockwell Company of Pittsburgh purchased the Automatic Voting Machine Company. Eventually the name changed to AVM and included the manufacturing of other products beside the voting machines. A series of changes, questionable (at least in hindsight) decisions, and changes in the market place saw a decline in the company. The last voting machine to be manufactured at the AVM plant in Jamestown was finished on November 11, 1982.

Time marches on and changes are made. Automatic Voting Machines are now a thing of the past, but during the 20th century they “put Jamestown on the map.” The company never reached the predicted number of workers but did for many years employ over 400 men and women.