"Cooping"

I came across this term while reading a Time magazine article and did some research on it. The term referres to the practice of forcing "unwilling participants" into voting "often several times...for a particular candidate in an election". The "participant" was often dressed and re-dressed before taken to a polling place and was usually heavily under the influence of alcohol when "voting". The term, I believe, comes from the idea that the "participant" was kept in one place while election day was occuring and then released after the polls closed. He was in fact "cooped up" in "vile dens, drugged, drunken and carried to voting places...". Many people believe that this is how Edgar Allen Poe died. He was found dressed in someone else's clothes lying on the street the day after an election day in 1849. In the movie "Gangs of New York" there is a scene depicting this practice in New York City around 1860. (Complaints about corruption of the electoral process are nothing new).

(Source: Wikipedia.org/wiki/cooping. 7/19/10. Also www.wisegeek.com/what-was-cooping.htm).