Cooping was a form of

electoral fraud Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud, or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share o ...

in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, cited speculatively in relation to the

death of Edgar Allan Poe The death of Edgar Allan Poe on October 7, 1849, has remained mysterious in regard to both the cause of death and the circumstances leading to it. American author Edgar Allan Poe was found delirious and disheveled at a tavern in Baltimore, Maryla ...

in October 1849, by which gangs kidnapped citizens off the street and forced them to

vote Voting is the process of choosing officials or policies by casting a ballot, a document used by people to formally express their preferences. Republics and representative democracies are governments where the population chooses representative ...

, often repeatedly, for an election candidate. According to some of Poe's biographers, so-called "cooping gangs" or "election gangs" working for a

political candidate A candidate, or nominee, is a prospective recipient of an award or honor, or a person seeking or being considered for some kind of position. For example, one can be a candidate for membership in a group or election to an office, in which case a ...

would hold random victims in a chamber or cellar (the "coop") and ply them with alcohol or give them face beatings to get them to comply. Often their clothing or other aspects of their appearance would be altered to fool voting officials, enabling them to vote multiple times. Other 19th-century accounts do not relate to voter fraud but instead, describe press gangs that used cooping to pressure recruits for the Union Army during the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

. One claim of cooping enlistees was made in a letter from Brigadier General Edward Winslow Hincks read by the Clerk of the House of Representatives in 1865. The general, who was in charge of the enlistment in New York, blamed the poor quality of enlisted men on cooping, whereby the men were "cooped up", plied with drink to the point of stupefaction, and tricked into enlisting.

References

Electoral violence in the United States Edgar Allan Poe Voting in the United States Electoral fraud in the United States {{Election-stub

See also

References