The city of Montgomery, Alabama, in cooperation with the Secretary of State’s office, will pilot a live electronic balloting system for overseas military and civilian voters in the upcoming municipal election on August 25, 2015.

The electronic voting system will allow citizens of Montgomery living overseas an opportunity to vote in the municipal election.

This pilot project is a test of the electronic balloting system being developed throughout the state of Alabama for military and civilian voters who are out of the country during an election.

For this week’s Highlighted Site, we turn to the Historical Highlights page of the United States House of Representatives’ Office of the Clerk. What I saw there rattled my ideas about electronic voting. When would you guess the first proposal was offered for electronic voting in Congress? I was way off. Take a look!

On this date in 1848, a Baltimore inventor named Francis Smith petitioned the U.S. House to adopt his “voting register,” a legislative telegraph to count the members’ votes. Smith sent a proposal and a prototype for the House to consider. Two other inventors did the same that year.

According to the site, “Despite repeated calls for modernizing the voting process, the House would not implement electronic voting until 1973.”

Other fascinating facts for this week:

February 28, 1860 – Representative Victor Berger of Wisconsin, the first Socialist Member of Congress

February 29, 1932 – Speaker John Nance Garner of Texas Receives a 400-Pound Gavel from his Constituents

March 1, 1945 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s final address to a Joint Session

Enjoy and have a terrific weekend!

Photos courtesy of the Library of Congress.