Talk:Cooping

Relationship to Poe
How cooping could have killed Poe? It's not clear the relationship of cooping and death. Botelio — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.130.173.221 (talk) 10:10, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Here,"and given alcohol or drugs in order for them to comply. If they refused to cooperate, they would be beaten or even killed" Wonderfully Copied by- Muggy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.182.46.50 (talk) 22:59, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Is Cooping a Myth?
I searched Google Books for any mention of cooping, independent of Edgar Alan Poe's death, published before 1900. All but one mention of cooping was in relation to Poe's death. The single exception is an article from February 24th 1865 in The Congressional Globe, the official proceedings of Congress (6 lines at the bottom right of page 1083). Cooping was briefly mentioned by Brigadier General Edward Winslow Hinks in a speech complaining about the poor quality of enlisted men from New York. He said that men were "copped up", plied with drink to the point of stupefaction and tricked into enlisting (but he is describing a press gang not voter fraud).

Thus, I have not found any mention of cooping as a form of voter fraud outside of Poe's mysterious death. Can anyone find an article describing cooping, used as a method of voter fraud, independent of Poe? I think it would be a good idea add an article(s) describing voter fraud linked cooping, independent of Poe.

The Congressional Globe, 1865. Office of the Congressional Globe. p. 1083.

--Diamonddavej (talk) 06:45, 20 August 2017 (UTC)


 * From what I can tell, the aforementioned voting practices *did* happen - https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/election-fraud-in-the-1800s-involved-kidnapping-and-forced-drinking has plenty of contemporary sources of this process - but the term "cooping" specifically to refer to these practices seems to be a modern invention (the term cooping in the original sources appear to refer to specifically the part where they were "cooped" up, and contemporary sources referred to the whole process as "voter abduction"). This is speculation, but my guess for what happened is that when the aforementioned Edgar Allen Poe biographers were doing the research, they saw the "cooping" part of the contemporary sources and called the entire practice "cooping" by mistake. Kczaj (talk) 20:48, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

The term "Cooping" as used here, seems to have been deliberately coopted c. 2000, possibly as a way to legitimize future election fraud by creating a false narrative of historic election violence in Baltimore.

This article discusses the legitimate form of the word "Cooping": https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/nyregion/forbidden-zone-for-the-police-places-ready-made-for-a-nap.html

--Tinker.Fool (talk) 11:21, 19 October 2020 (EST)

Move to Electoral Fraud
This should be moved to Electoral Fraud as a subcategory. This article is a stub and should not exist as it's own article. I suggest this goes up for debate. What is your opinion? WarriorFISH (talk) 00:23, 13 October 2017 (UTC)