‘Op proef doeltreffend gebleken, kunnen we spreken van een bereikt ideaal’

Abstract

Abstract ‘Proved effective on trial, we can speak of an achieved ideal’ Abraham Kuyper and the mechanical voting machine, c. 1895-1905 During the latest presidential elections in the United States, unfounded conspiracy theories sprung up concerning alleged ballot box fraud by compromised voting machines. Although different voting machines had been used in the Netherlands since 1966, concerns over their reliability ended this in 2007. This article investigates the forgotten but ultimately failed attempt to introduce mechanical voting machines a century earlier. It focuses on the role played by prominent politician Abraham Kuyper, who personally visited the Standard Voting Machine Company in Rochester in 1898. The article illustrates how Kuyper’s transatlantic political and religious networks facilitated the voting machine’s transfer, rather than scientific connections. Paradoxically, the introduction of proportional representation in 1917 marked the end of tentative attempts to develop a Dutch version of the American mechanical voting machine. The implementation in the voting process turned out be too expensive, too early, and too complicated for the Dutch electoral system at the dawn of the twentieth century.