Currently working to help election administrators and interested in learning more about the intersection of elections and AI. Former county election official. Proud Michigander 🪿
![Because Poe was found on the day of an election, it was suggested as early as 1872[42] that he was the victim of cooping.[43] This was a ballot-box-stuffing scam in which victims were abducted off the street by local "election gangs", imprisoned in a small room called "the coop", drugged or forced with alcohol or beatings to get them to comply. The cooping victims were then used as pawns to vote for a political party at multiple locations. Often their clothing would be changed and/or they would be given disguises such as wigs, fake beards, or mustaches to fool voting officials and vote multiple times.[36] Cooping, which would also explain the dirty and disheveled clothes and shoes that he was wearing when he was found, had become the standard explanation for Poe's death in most of his biographies for several decades,[44] though his status in Baltimore may have made him too recognizable for this scam to have worked.[45]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:r2y3br46tuz3om6n4rhjzk2e/bafkreiaosupz4vuwf74qcn2yvgcdmkmgxfphdkbppm27gollndukxmtmfm)
Currently working to help election administrators and interested in learning more about the intersection of elections and AI. Former county election official. Proud Michigander 🪿