DRE voting machine

A direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machine records votes by means of a ballot display provided with mechanical or electro-optical components that can be activated by the voter (typically buttons or a touchscreen); that processes data by means of a computer program; and that records voting data and ballot images in memory components. After the election it produces a tabulation of the voting data stored in a removable memory component and as printed copy. The system may also provide a means for transmitting individual ballots or vote totals to a central location for consolidating and reporting results from precincts at the central location. The device started to be massively used in 1996, in Brazil, where 100% of the elections voting system is carried out using machines.

In 2004, 28.9% of the registered voters in the United States used some type of direct recording electronic voting system, up from 7.7% in 1996.

The idea of voting by push button, with electrical technology used to total the votes, dates back to the 19th century, when Frank Wood of Boston was granted a patent on a direct-recording electrical voting machine. (Thomas Edison's electrical voting system patent is sometimes cited in this regard, but it was intended for tallying roll-call votes in legislative chambers; as such, it is more like an audience response system.) The idea of electrical voting was pursued with much more vigor in the 20th century. Numerous patents were filed in the 1960s, many of them by AVM Corporation (the former Automatic Voting Machine Corporation), the company that had a near monopoly on mechanical voting machine at the time.

The first direct-recording electronic voting machine to be used in a government election was the Video Voter. This was developed by the Frank Thornber Company in Chicago. The Video Voter saw its first trial use in 1974 near Chicago, Illinois, and remained in use until 1980

Microvote and Shoup Voting Machine Corporation entered the market in the mid 1980s with the MV-464 and the Shouptronic. Both of these machines saw widespread use; over 11,000 Shouptronic machines had been sold by 1993. In the years that followed, the rights to the Shouptronic were transferred to Guardian Voting, and then to Danaher Controls, which sold it as the ELECTronic 1242.

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