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Chautauqua County is about to lose another piece of history and nobody except County Historian Norman Carlson seems to know about.
The 21st Century history of voting winds through western New York and most specifically Chautauqua County's Jamestown where the world headquarters for the now defunct Automatic Voting Machine (AVM) was once located. An erected historic marker on the city's Jones & Gifford Ave. states, "At this site from 1895 to 1993, Jamestown-based companies pioneered in developing, manufacturing and servicing of mechanical-lever voting machines and electronic voting systems. For many years Jamestown-built machines dominated the industry."
The recent lineage ownership of AVM and the mechanical lever voting machines began their final death march in 1984 when AVM assets were acquired by Sequoia Voting Systems and then by Dominion Voting Systems in 2010. (In 2025 Dominion was acquired by Liberty Vote of Denver, Colorado.)
Sequoia Voting Systems operated a division that continued to service the old AVM lever voting machines, but the problems of hanging chads in Florida for the 2000 presidential election and concern that lever voting machines were no longer being produced anywhere caused the old technologies to be outlawed in the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002.
When AVM was a voting powerhouse located on Jones and Gifford, its management acquired many historically significant voting machines. The collection was on display in a mini museum at the AVM Jones & Gifford Avenue headquarters. The more than a dozen historical lever voting machines mostly, if not all, pre-dated the 1895 Jamestown roots of AVM and don't really represent our own county history. These machines represent an even greater American History of voting and were the forebearers of our local voting machine history.
Prior to 2005, the historical voting machine collection was gifted by Sequoia Voting Systems to the City of Jamestown in an agreement with then Mayor Sam Teresi. Nowhere to display the machines, they were relegated for the last two decades to a storage room underneath city hall at the back of the internal parking lot. This was the same room where working city owned lever voting machines were located until the lever voting machines were discontinued for county run elections in 2009.
The ownership of all voting machines in NYS passed from the local towns and cities to the counties of New York State under the Election Consolidation Act of 2005. That includes, in my non-lawyer opinion, the historical antique voting machines that were donated to the City of Jamestown during Teresi's tenure.
In 2009, as former Chautauqua County Democratic Election Commissioner, I was the elected president of the New York State Election Commissioners' Association. Our organization saw more than 200 members gather from all areas of the state for our annual summer conference that year at Chautauqua Institution. As part of the meeting, I had transported a half dozen of the most significant of these historical voting machines from the stored Jamestown City Hall basement collection for display in the Athenaeum Hotel's lobby. This was the last time of any public display of the voting machines now in Norm Carlson's storage barn.
In 2019, along with then county Republican Election Commissioner Brian Abram, we approached then County Executive George Borrello with an idea to uncrate and place all the old-time voting machines at an unused wing at the county airport in Ellicott for a historical display along with local collection of AVM locally manufactured voting machines. Jamestown Mayor Teresi concurred with the idea. Borrello agreed, but before the plan could be effectuated, he ran successfully for NYS Senate, the Pandemic shifted everyone's focus and the plan was out of mind.
Through best acquired information, in early 2026 the current leadership at Jamestown City Hall determined that the storage area where the priceless historical voting machines were located needed to be emptied. Allegedly, the city leaders were fine with scrapping the priceless antique machines, as the Board of Elections had previously done with the "newer" voting machines produced in all decades of the 21st century and gathered from all county towns, cities and many school districts by the BOE in 2009. (Except if the community desired to reclaim prior ownership for historical purposes. Which many did.)
The city leadership contacted the county, which allegedly rejected the idea it had ownership. But the true hero of this story stepped up; County Historian Norman P. Carlson. He gathered muscle and transportation with the assistance of a couple of city employees he said and moved the priceless voting machines. Unable to find a proper county, city or historical location, Carlson generously moved the many previously city owned historical voting machines which weigh hundreds of pounds each to his personal storage barn at his residence. The historian readily admits that this is an unsatisfactory location and will not be properly protected from the elements.
I learned of the historical voting machine plight in an off-hand comment during a presentation about Jamestown's No. 93 Trolley by Bob Johnson, who is one of the restorers of the No. 93 project, when he spoke at the Fredonia Opera House.
Are the final days of these historical priceless voting machines being located in the county with its storied voting machine history over? Will this history be going the way of our lost Sea Lion, Summer Wind or the old Chautauqua Lake Steamers. Norm Carlson told me that he is entertaining a person from California who is flying in over the next few weeks who has a place to protect and display at a museum he curates in that state. Otherwise, it's Carlson's barn or another storage place Norm mentioned to me as a possibility unless one of our county historical groups or thus far uninterested politicians stands up and helps County Historian Norm Carlson find a solution with the ownership that he currently controls.
Norm Green is a Dunkirk resident. He was the Democratic Election Commissioner for nearly 25 years.