Overslept, Needed It

...But I'm much better now! (As the brilliant and likeable John Astin often said, in character as Gomez Addams.) (Ah, but see Comments: did the line only turn up much later, in his appearances on Night Court?  I thought it was a deliberate re-use but perhaps not.)

     Speaking of Mr. Astin -- still very much with us and teaching drama at Johns Hopkins University, if Wikipedia is to be believed -- it had never occurred to me that he bears quite a resemblance to Edgar Allen Poe.*  It had to him and he proceeded to -- ahem -- act on it.

     You might bear the unfortunate Poe in mind as election day approaches; there's a theory that he died of voter fraud: in the 19th Century, persons would be kidnapped off the street, drugged or liquored up, and sent forth to vote for a party multiple times, with a change of clothes (etc.) and another dose in between, going from one polling place to another.  It was called "cooping" and  worked best with alcoholics, drug addicts and vagrants.  Poe had been traveling from Richmond, Virgina to New York and was found in Baltimore, wearing clothing not his own, near a voting location and in a state of serious intoxication; he died without ever being able to give any account of how he ended up in such a condition.

     And you were wondering why in many states even now, the bars must remain closed as long as the polls are open? Now you know.
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* Possibly one reason he was chosen to play Gomez, s’il vous plaît?