A fascinating article from 1936 on voting machines. They are not some new invention,
Inventors of the voting machine undertook to eliminate (improperly marked ballots). First man to give the problem attention appears to have been Jan Josef Baranowski in Paris, France, in 1849. He suggested that adding machine principles be applied to voting and that a closet be provided in which the voter could make his choice by turning handles or pushing buttons opposite the names of candidates. De Brettes in that year and Werner von Siemens in 1859 in Germany constructed primitive legislative voting machines, operated mechanically to cast either white or black balls. Thomas Edison patented a crude machine in 1869. At about the same time, Vassie, Chamberlain, Sydserff and Davy produced devices in England.
The exuberant article really puts the utter failure that is modern “electronic voting machines” in stark perspective. As security guru Bruce Schneier points out, “Complexity is the worst enemy of security; as systems become more complex, they get less secure.”