Abstract
In reaction to public dismay over the technological inadequacy of electoral equipment in the 2000 presidential elections, Congress quickly enacted the Help America Vote Act, legislation to fund the acquisition of advanced vote-counting technology. The intention was to enable, rather than mandate, choices of new equipment. This paper utilizes a unique historical opportunity to test whether electoral equipment follows the pattern predicted by well-established models of innovation diffusion, merging electoral data with census data on socio-economic characteristics. We infer that fiscal constraints to acquisition are strong but not the only limitations to technology adoption, particularly within certain easily identifiable populations.
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