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A little more than a year ago, an obscure Defense Department website called defendamerica.mil posted a routine notice from the Selective Service System (SSS) seeking to fill vacancies on the nation's 2,000 draft boards. The boards do little these days — the last draft ended 31 years ago — but they are maintained in case a cataclysmic event makes conscription necessary again.

Few noticed the defendamerica posting, but it pinged around the Web and eventually helped create one of the most dubious e-mail phenomena since ads for penis enhancement: the rumor that if he is re-elected, President Bush plans to reinstate the draft.

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The President has repeatedly said he favors an all-volunteer military, as does John Kerry. But that hasn't dissuaded a loose-knit coterie of online conspiracists, antiwar activists and Democratic Party operatives from keeping the draft rumor alive.

The chatter began last year after Democrats introduced a pair of bills in Congress to resume conscription. The bills weren't taken seriously in Washington — Representative Charles Rangel said he introduced his version to make the point that the volunteer military is full of minority kids with few options. But the bills led to the formation of a website called stopthedraftnow.com, and they inspired a largely fallacious, prodigiously forwarded e-mail claiming that the White House was fighting for the bills and that "$28 million has been added to the 2004 Selective Service System budget to prepare for a draft." In fact the entire SSS budget is just $26 million, and the system estimates it would need $600 million to oversee a national draft. When Republicans finally brought Rangel's bill to a vote last week, it lost 402 to 2.

But by then the rumor had plodded from chat rooms to the mainstream, especially on college campuses. This fall the University of Minnesota's Daily ran an editorial concluding that "re-electing Bush might very well lead to a draft." The National Annenberg Election Survey released last week found that 51% of 18-to-29-year-olds believe that the President wants a draft, in contrast to just 8% who think Kerry does. Kerry surrogates Howard Dean, Max Cleland and Michael Moore have all stoked draft fears. Democratic Iowa Senator Tom Harkin told the Des Moines Register this month that the White House has "secret plans" to begin a draft. And Rock the Vote, the left-leaning group started by the music industry, is running ads featuring a forlorn-looking young man getting a buzz cut. "OFF TO COLLEGE OR OFF TO WAR?" the ad asks. "Could you be drafted?"

Democrats, who are no doubt thrilled when reporters call about the draft, say it's a legitimate issue. "The Administration is using the military in a way that may make reinstating the draft necessary in the future," says Jim Jordan, a former Kerry campaign manager. He notes that "it's exactly the kind of issue that gooses base turnout."

Maybe. But in dozens of interviews in seven states last week, TIME found that while many students are discussing the draft, few say they will decide their vote on the issue. "The draft is just being used as a tool by Democrats to get Bush," says Kirsten Steffey, a senior at Drake University in Iowa who plans to vote for Kerry. "It's just a distraction from issues I'm more concerned about." Hope as Democrats might, an Election Day boost for Kerry remains, like the draft itself, merely hypothetical.

• John Cloud