Kevin Drum flags Matt Taibbi overpromising and underdelivering on his allegations of vote fraud in Ohio. No surprise there. The Democrats even conceded that there was no evidence of fraud when releasing their report on irregularities in Ohio (which does show that we to improve access to the polls so that people don’t have to wait in line for hours).

More importantly, Walter Mebane, a respected political scientist at Cornell who consulted on the DNC report, told the Washington Post that it is “highly unlikely” that Kerry would have won Ohio no matter what:

Walter R. Mebane Jr., a professor of government at Cornell University and member of the task force, said Ohio suffered from a “gross administrative failure” on Election Day. But he later said there was no “support whatsoever for the claim that there was a large-scale misallocation of vote from [Democratic nominee John F.] Kerry to [President] Bush in Ohio” and said it is highly unlikely Kerry would have won the state in any case.

…Mebane stopped short of charging that Republicans had deliberately set out to frustrate Democratic voters. He said the scope of the study could not determine whether there was any partisan intent and noted that local election boards, which determine the distribution of voting machines, are bipartisan.

Barring more solid evidence, it’s time to put this conspiracy theory to bed.