"Stuffing" the Ballot Boxes

George Thompson george.thompson at NYU.EDU
Thu Aug 1 23:31:10 UTC 2013


The OED should be getting close to "stuff", verb, in its revising.  Here's
a tidbit:

     Arrest of an Election Inspector for "Stuffing" the Ballot Boxes.
 [headline]

     New York Morning Express, December 7, 1859, p. 4, col. 3

 OED:
8.d. *U.S.* ‘To put fraudulent votes into (a ballot-box)’ (W. 1911).
1872   M. Schele de Vere
*Americanisms<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2511/view/Entry/192092?rskey=JFK9tQ&result=1>
* 272.
1906   *Q. Rev.<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2511/view/Entry/192092?rskey=JFK9tQ&result=1>
* July 283   The interval had been devoted to stuffing the ballot-boxes.

Note that this is a free-range "stuffing", not one cage-reared by a
lexicographer.

(I can't figure out how to get rid of the cockamamie spacing between the
lines.)

GAT

-- 
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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