Armed to Send Chads Into Voting Oblivion Americans have quibbled over voting methods since landowners in the 13 colonies first spoke their candidates' names to an election officer. By 1888, voters were marking their first secret ballots. Like voice votes, the paper ballots still used by 1 percent of voters are vulnerable to misreadings or mischief. The modern voting machine industry was born in 1869, when Thomas A. Edison patented a mechanical device intended for members of Congress. In 1892, Lockport, N.Y., held the first public election using a lever- operated machine, made by a Rochester safemaker, Jacob H. Myers, according to Sequoia Pacific Voting Equipment. Sequoia inherited the company that Myers created in 1895 to "protect mechanically the voter from rascaldom." A Century later, the rascaldom and error-prone systems persist. The counties and municipalities that oversee elections in the United States have patched together a quilt of varied voting systems. Each has problems. The most- often reviled culprit in the 2000 election was the punch-card ballot used by one in three voters. Voters pick candidates by poking out pencil-point sized holes � or chads, in election parlance � in the ballot. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/technology/17ELEC.html?pagewanted=all