Cuyahoga County elections are due for a complete overhaul if the new secretary of state has her way.
In the wake of numerous election problems (some of which I wrote about for Wired News last October) and the recent conviction of two Cuyahoga County Board of Election workers who were accused of rigging recount procedures, Ohio's Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has called for the resignation of all four members of Cuyahoga's elections board.
Brunner, a Democrat who was elected last November, said that if the two Republicans and two Democrats who make up the board don't resign by end of day tomorrow, she'll initiate procedures to fire them. She warned the board members that they'd be better off resigning than face the public airing of dirty laundry that will come if they put up a fight.
Election Director Michael Vu already resigned last month after taking heat for severe problems with last May's primary. His resignation came a month after two election workers were sentenced to 18 months in prison for tampering with the 2004 presidential recount. According to the charges, the workers, wanting to avoid a drawn-out recount, secretly re-counted precincts in advance of the official recount and made sure that the official recount included only precincts where they were certain the results matched the certified election results.
Ohio, of course, is an important state in national elections, and Cuyahoga is particularly important, since it's the state's most populous county. Watch for more news to come out as the state attempts to reform its elections.
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