Were there efforts made to teach voters how to use the machine?
Transcript
To familiarize people with the kinds of conditions in which they're going to be making a vote, candidates historically would distribute flyers or literature, usually literature that show some kind of a facsimile of it. In other words, they would present a voter with the graphic layout that looked like the inside of a voting machine It's helpful to show that kind of literature juxtaposed with the device that you're going to be actually voting and it can be-- You can use it as kind of campaign promotional literature but it also helps explain the objects that you're seeking to explain, making it better understood.Source
Interview with Larry Bird, Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, May 31, 2006.
Much of the history of voting in America has been the story of the expansion and contraction of the voting rights. The invention and use of the 1898 Standard Voting Machine coincided with concern among progressive reformers about fraud and corruption in the electoral process. However, the story of progressive reform should be situated within the larger story of the struggle for voting rights among African Americans and women, and the attempt of the American polity to grapple with the question of whether the large numbers of newly arrived immigrants were fit to participate in civic life.
