The new system will make it tough on the income-tax chiseler. Caplin points out that not only the withholding-tax information from the employer, and forms from the employee, but also dividend statements and other supplementary income information will funnel automatically into John Doe’s portion of the tape. If John is moonlighting, holding down a second job he might forget to mention, the computer will spot it and charge a tax on it. The apprehended tax-dodger may well call the computer an infernal revenue machine.
There are of course many other ways the computer is helping out in the complex problems of government, both Federal and local. The computer has already figured in national elections, making predictions well in advance as to the outcome. Now the machines are being used in the actual voting procedure. In 1952 an IBM computer predicted Eisenhower’s victory within two hours after the first polls closed. In the early days of computer predictions, the men using them were overly cautious and afraid to accept the machine’s word. Techniques and confidence have improved with practice, and in 1960 IBM’s RAMAC predicted victory for Kennedy at 8:12 p.m. election night.
To make accurate predictions, the computer is given information from preceding elections. In 1960 it was fed the results of the 1956, 1952, 1948, and 1928 (because of the religious considerations) elections. Forecasters were able to ask the computer such questions as, “How is Nixon doing compared with Eisenhower’s showing in 1952?” “How is Kennedy doing compared with Al Smith back in 1928?” “Is labor voting as a bloc?” and “How solid is the South?” The computer is now an accepted part of network equipment for election reporting. ABC used the Remington Rand UNIVAC; CBS, IBM RAMAC and other machines; and NBC the RCA 501.
International Business Machines Corp.
Computers are used to predict the results of elections.
In addition to forecasting results, computers are beginning to do other election work. Los Angeles County experimented with a computer method of counting votes in 1960. Greene County, Ohio, used punched cards for ballots for 50,000 voters in a pioneering computer voting system. The cards were processed in a UNIVAC computer at Dayton Air Force Depot. A bolder suggestion is that of political scientist R. M. Goldman of Michigan State University: actual voting by telephone-operated computer!
To solve another problem area in voting, the use of computers was recently proposed at a state congressional hearing in Boston. Redistricting, the bugaboo that led to “gerrymandering,” might well be done by “unbiased” computers which would arrive at an optimum redistricting plan. These unbiased results would be “beyond politics and in the best interests of the voters and the State,” according to the computer expert who proposed the plan.
Moving from voting to a more complicated problem, that of urban renewal, the University of Washington is conducting a survey under federal grant on the extent of deterioration and the causes of decay in Spokane residential, commercial, and industrial areas. The IBM 709 computer makes possible an accurate and extensive survey expected to shed light on areas of arrested development, and on the amount of tax revenue lost because of existing blight.
Electronic Legal Eagle
Some writers see the clearest evidence of the victory of the computer—if indeed we admit to there ever having been any real battle—in the admission by the legal profession that it must begin to chart the legal seas of the computer age.