COUNTING AMERICA’S 40,000,000 VOTES (Nov, 1936)
NEWS of the election of George Washington as first president of the United States was borne by stagecoach in 1789 throughout the country in about three weeks. Barring a close division of the 40,000,000 voters, the outcome of the current contest of .Franklin D. Roosevelt and Alfred M. Landon will be made known to a far vaster country in about three hours after the polls close on Nov. 3. This miracle is made possible by the inclusion unofficially in the archaic Electoral system, itself little changed since Washington’s day, of every device evolved for the counting of votes and the transmission of results. Ingenious voting machines record and count votes at the same time. Adding machines produce instant totals. Motorcycles, telegraph lines, telephones, press association wires, newspapers, and radio stations distribute the results at a speed unequalled in any other country.