But, says Philips, "Once the official results were posted, Cuyahoga's undervote total fell to 3.25%," leaving him to wonder "how the unofficial results could have been so erroneous in the first place."
Hayes also found that Cuyahoga County reported 30,791 uncounted absentee and provisional ballots. After these ballots were counted, they reported 39,262 votes, an outcome Phillips terms mathematically "impossible."
Bennett and Vu were also responsible for more than $12,900,000 in BOE cost overruns, more than doubling the agency's original budget of $11,000,000.
Vu resigned earlier this year, and has since been hired as an Assistant Registrar of Voters in San Diego County, the number two spot, with a $10,000 salary increase to $130,000 a year. The San Diego Union-Tribune noted that, "Vu's resignation followed a tumultuous 3 1/2-year tenure as election chief, including a disastrous May 2006 primary when the county began using new electronic voting machines."
In response to the chaos and recrimination, Brunner requested the resignations of the Cuyahoga board's two Democrats and two Republicans. Only Bennett vowed to fight his removal.
But he has now become the highest election board official to resign here amidst the deepening scandals surrounding the 2004 election. He has joined the growing Republican chorus echoing Rove's line that the Democrats are preparing to steal the 2008 election.
But Brunner has taken custody of the 2004 ballots and other vote count materials, which are currently protected by a federal court decision. She is expected to bring them from Ohio's 88 county boards to a central repository in Columbus.
Meanwhile, new evidence is emerging that Karl Rove and the GOP had real-time computer access to both the actual vote numbers in Ohio as well as the exit polling data that would have allowed them to direct how many votes they needed from the suspect Ohio southwestern Republican counties that gave Bush his official margin of victory in the 2004 election. Stay tuned.
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Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman's books include HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION (www.freepress.org) and WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO from the New Press (with Steve Rosenfeld).
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