Voting Machine History

The first mechanical lever voting machine debuted in the 1892 election in Lockport, New York. By the 1960s, more than half the country’s elections were conducted with lever machines. They were used in presidential elections through 1996, until being replaced by computerized devices. Today most polling locations have scanning systems, which first appeared in Kern City, California in 1962 but only became popular in the past two decades.