Professor Bryan Pfaffenberger

For more than a century, voting machines have helped shape American political history.

The chaos of the 2000 presidential election in Florida drew attention to the crucial role that voting machines played in shaping the outcome of that election. But Bryan Pfaffenberger, associate professor in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at U.Va.’s School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS), believes there is value in understanding that the interaction between voting technology and culture has been going on for more than a century.

Pfaffenberger is studying the history of mechanical-lever voting machines. His research focuses on the machines’ introduction in New York State in 1892 to 1925, when the technology was employed throughout the state.

“There’s an almost exact parallel between the debate we’re having today concerning electronic voting machines and the equally divisive but completely forgotten debate that greeted firstgeneration voting machine technology in the 1920s,” Pfaffenberger says.

By showing how first-generation voting machines enabled national party elites to reduce the autonomy of localities, Pfaffenberger is helping to resolve a long-running controversy among political scientists and historians about who was responsible for the sweeping electoral reforms that characterized the 1890s.

A recent $27,000 grant from the National Science Foundation is allowing Pfaffenberger to pursue archival research on the topic. Already he has found that scholars have all but ignored the history of voting machines, which he finds surprising given our politically obsessed culture.

“It’s almost as if this subject wasn’t even explored until the 2000 presidential election,” he says. “After that, voting technology suddenly mattered to folks.”

Pfaffenberger’s study is part of a larger Democracy and Technology program that he is developing with colleagues in the University’s Department of Science, Technology, and Society — an initiative that has already sparked several cross-University collaborations and additions to the curriculum.

“It’s fitting that this initiative is under way at the university Thomas Jefferson founded,” says Pfaffenberger. “Jefferson strongly believed that engineers need to be good citizens. Today, the need is greater than ever, so it’s important for science and engineering students — indeed, students throughout the University — to reflect on how technologies shape our democracy.”