The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation has denied there was any foul play in the vote counts for this year's inductions:

Joel Peresman, president and CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, said the Fox News story was wrong.

When asked if [Jann] Wenner fudged the voting, Peresman said, "No. There is a format and rules and procedure. There is a specific time when the votes have to be in, and then they are counted. The bands with the top five votes got in."

Peresman said the only thing new about the induction process was a reduction in the number of voters. "We used to have 1,000 people who voted," Peresman said. "But we looked at who hadn't been voting over the years and took them off the list. Now we have about 560 or 570 voters. And of those, we have about an 80 percent return in votes."

In Cleveland, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum President and CEO Terry Stewart said he deals with similar charges every year at this time.

"It's aggravating because these kinds of anonymous sources and accusations serve to confirm the beliefs of anybody who feels their favorite band should have gotten in," he said.

Peresman doesn't deny that there were late votes that would have put the Dave Clark Five ahead of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, but he doesn't confirm that either. Why would Wenner have even opened the late votes -- especially when he apparently had the lineup he wanted? The Rock Hall simply needs to discard unopened ballots that come in after the deadline to avoid this type of controversy, or hire someone independent to tally the votes.