Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2021 October 25

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October 25

LA County, 1960 general election

Hi, in the 1960 general election there was no automatic voting yet, I guess, so even though it was a large and growing county, is it possible the votes were simply counted by hand? Thank you very much. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.41.96.254 (talk) 14:44, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

They would have definitely been counted by hand. This is still the norm in many countries.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 15:03, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

According to This, LA county was using punch card voting at the time. Such technology had been enacted several decades before; the first voting machines were introduced in the 1910s, based on the IBM punch card model, and those systems were mostly universal by the 1960s. --Jayron32 16:23, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Our Voting machine article suggests that first use was in 1965. DOR (HK) (talk) 19:38, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

The Vot-a-matic punched card system came out in 1965. Other earlier systems existed and were in widespread use before then, such as the Gear-and-Lever based voting machine that were used in California from about the 1910s. Voters in LA county would have been very familiar with them, and in the 1960 general election, as described above, the voters would have likely used THAT system, and not hand-filled-out and hand-counted ballots. --Jayron32 12:00, 29 October 2021 (UTC)