ABSTRACT
The United States Congress is not an institution that quickly embraces technological change. When congressional leaders were approached in 1869 by the young Thomas A. Edison who had just invented an automatic voting machine, they summarily brushed him off. The invention, a marvelous, time-saving device was indeed efficient: in just minutes, all of the lawmakers could cast their vote electronically on the floor of the House, saving countless hours. However, this promised efficiency transgressed the folkways and rhythms of the congressional deliberative process (Josephson, 65-66). Forty-five years later, a congressman, who had been an electrical engineer, introduced legislation to consider electronic voting, but the House of Representatives in 1914 ignored him (Griffith and Oleszek). Finally, in 1973, electronic voting became effective in the House of Representatives, with some forty voting stations plus electronic equipment at the floor managers’ tables so that they could monitor progress of the voting, and computers at the rear of the chamber connected to the voting system. Despite the thirty years of successful use in the House, the U.S. Senate still does not permit electronic voting.
