Punch,  58 (1870), 129.

Voting By Machinery

Anon

Genre:

Reportage, Spoof

Subjects:

Politics, Invention, Machinery


    Announces that a machine for 'facilitating vote by ballot' is now on show. Explains how the machine allows only one voter to enter an 'iron house' at a time, where the voter is presented with 'All the pros and cons for the different candidates' by machinery. The machine then hands him some money to pay for his vote and forces him to put his voting slip or 'pill' into the receptacle in which he has just been paid to put it. The voter is then 'taken out, by machinery, escapes the hands of an infuriated, or simply inquisitive mob, by machinery, goes home, by machinery, and spends his money like clockwork, and lives happily ever afterwards—by machinery'. Adds that on hearing news of this invention some 'Waxwork Gentlemen' residing in Madame Tussaud's Waxworks 'applied to be admitted to the privilege of electors'.



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