Wayne County native Hiram Swartz had a long and distinguished career as a lawyer, probate judge, president of the Wayne County Bar Association, and two-term mayor of Wooster (1877 – 1881). He was also an inventor, who devoted almost 30 years to the development, perfection and patenting of a mechanical voting machine that allowed voters to select a button for a straight party ticket or to vote for individual candidates, regardless of party affiliation.
Unfortunately, most people were not keen on using a new, unproven technology instead of a paper ballot. And the Swartz machine had a fatal flaw: mistakes could not be corrected. If a mistake was identified, an entire day of voting would be lost. For those reasons, the Swartz voting machine was not a commercial success.
