Election conspiracies live on

Chicago Tribune: Ever since the Nov. 2 election, the Internet has been blazing with cries and whispers that the election was hijacked by Republican operatives. These theories range from the bizarre to the merely implausible, with some academics across the country apparently feeding the conflagration with statistical analyses that seem to support the contention of a nefarious plot to steal the election.
So far, it's safe to say, nothing has emerged that would threaten to change the outcome. But inquiries continue, both official and unofficial. And even though many popular rumors are debunked almost as soon as they gain wide circulation, they often continue to percolate on the Web, probably because so many people want to believe them. It all becomes, in the words of one Ohio election official, "a snowball of hearsay."
There have been charges that more ballots were cast than there are registered voters in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland. Not true, say local election officials. There was a quirky way that their computers displayed vote totals, but no evidence of tampering or fraud.
Polls
There have even been theories that the disparity between exit polls favoring Kerry and the actual voting -- 51 percent for Bush -- pointed to fraud. This may be the first time in history that polls predicting the vote on Election Day have been considered more accurate than the vote on Election Day.
U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat from New York, announced last week that his office would gather information from voters and activists about voting irregularities. He and other House Democrats are asking the Government Accountability Office to investigate the "efficacy of voting machines and new technologies," with an eye toward improving the system.
That's good to investigate. There were voting glitches in some areas, as there always are. They're usually caused by confusion or technical snafus. The nation needs to keep working on reliable balloting.
Most tellingly, the Democratic leadership, which fielded thousands of lawyers to watch for election fraud across the country, isn't backing the blog-driven outcry that the election was stolen. That's because it wasn't.