Beautifully engraved SPECIMEN certificate from the
Automatic Voting Machine Corporation. This historic document was printed by the American Bank Note Company and has an
ornate border around it with a vignette of an allegorical woman sitting down and leaning up against a lion. This item has the printed signatures of the Company's President and Secretary.
Certificate Vignette
There were two major manufacturers of mechanical voting machines in the U.S. at that time. One was Shoup Voting Machine Co. Of Gerry, New York, which already had sold equipment to several parishes. The other was The Automatic Voting Machine Corporation of Jamestown, New York that produced voting machines since 1896. Neither company could produce the numbers of machines required to fill the Louisiana order within the time specified, so the machines were ordered from both manufacturers and would be placed in whole Congressional Districts. Since Orleans, East Baton Rouge, Calcasieu and Caddo already had some Shoup Voting Machines, the congressional districts 1, 2, 4, 6 & 7 would all get Shoup Voting Machines. There were 34 parishes in these five congressional districts. The rest of the state that included congressional districts 3, 5 & 8 were slated to get the Automatic Voting Machine. Both machines had the same capacity (500 voting levers) and all the same security features as required by the Voting Machine Law of 1952. The AVM machine manufactured by Automatic Voting Machine Corporation was different only in that the ballot presentation was horizontal and mostly at eye level with the voter. Additionally, the top part of the voting machine descends into the lower case that facilitates handling when transporting from storage to precinct and back.
About SpecimensSpecimen Certificates are actual certificates that have never been issued. They were usually kept by the printers in their permanent archives as their only example of a particular certificate. Sometimes you will see a hand stamp on the certificate that says "Do not remove from file".
Specimens were also used to show prospective clients different types of certificate designs that were available. Specimen certificates are usually much scarcer than issued certificates. In fact, many times they are the only way to get a certificate for a particular company because the issued certificates were redeemed and destroyed. In a few instances, Specimen certificates were made for a company but were never used because a different design was chosen by the company.
These certificates are normally stamped "Specimen" or they have small holes spelling the word specimen. Most of the time they don't have a serial number, or they have a serial number of 00000. This is an exciting sector of the hobby that has grown in popularity over the past several years.