It took a couple days of deep soul searching for the two Cleveland Democrats, attorney Edward Coaxum Jr. and building trades leader Loree Soggs, to understand that after years of election screw ups (before, during and after elections) by the CCBOE under their leadership, it was in the best interest of county voters, elections board staff and their now-tarnished reputations to resign without a fight.

BENNETT BATTLES ON (UNTIL HE RESIGNS)

For someone who sang from the same songbook authored by Karl Rove and George Bush decrying "frivolous lawsuits" filed by greedy trial lawyers, Bennett seems to have put that horse back in the barn, given the high-priced Cincinnati trial lawyer he just hired to file an purely antagonist "frivolous lawsuit" designed to deflect attention away from his deplorable leadership at the CCBOE. The courts should summarily dismiss it, as has already been done in the "court of public opinion," which has ruled that Bennett is wrong, Brunner is right, and Rotund Robert should give up the ghost.

Embarrassing himself further Bennett said in the court of public opinion, Bennett said the complaint appeared political in nature.

While today's filing by the Secretary of State carries a lot of political overtones, the course we are about to take is a judicial process. Therefore, I will have no further public comment on this matter and defer all questions on the advice of legal counsel, Bennett said in an e-mail to the Associated Press.

The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer editorialized on the Republican mess, saying:

Board Chairman Bob Bennett and Sally Florkiewicz are decent, well-intentioned people. They undoubtedly would like to help rebuild the board's reputation; so did Coaxum and Soggs. But an agency that for decades has lurched from one fiasco to the next needs a thorough housecleaning.

The two remaining members should swallow their pride and work with Brunner, who has the statutory authority to remove them, to make that housecleaning happen as smoothly as possible. There are major local elections this fall and a presidential primary and election to conduct next year. All signs indicate that the eyes of the world will again be on Ohio and Cuyahoga County in November 2008. That voting must be efficient, fair and transparent. The sooner a quality team - both on the board and on the professional staff - is in place to achieve those goals, the better.

More negative fall-out for Bennett came in this editorial, which again said that Brunner is right and has the upper hand going forward.

We suspect that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is no more disgusted with the Cuyahoga County elections scandal -- and it is just that -- than are many other Buckeye State residents. "Incompetence" and "fraud" seem to have been the watchwords for some of those in charge of elections in the county.

Brunner probably is right to start from the proverbial "square one" in restoring confidence in Cuyahoga County. But we encourage her to continue taking a close look at elections boards throughout the state, at all levels of their operations. Ohioans need to be able to rely on elections officials and workers for competence and honesty.

Even though The Wheeling News Herald's audience may find the doings in Cleveland a bit far a field from their backyard doings, they still know a skunk when they smell one:

When something's broken, you fix it. That adage especially applies to a public entity with an obligation to run efficient elections. Give Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner credit for being a quick study. Upon taking office, she couldn't ignore the incompetence demonstrated by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. Cuyahoga County voters must have confidence in the election process, and that hasn't happened in a long time in Ohio's most populous county.

Adding insult to injury, Bennett's bad behavior recalls the protestations of innocence uttered by now-jailed Republican heavyweight Tom Noe, who was brought to justice in the wake of the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation scandals that rocked the statehouse and served as a political entry to Democratic office seekers who returned most statewide seats, including that of governor, to Democrats in last year's election.  And his exhortations of defiance at not being blamable for the election disasters that took place under his watch in 2004 and 2006 - now formalized in a lawsuit against Brunner - are laughable at best and unconscionable at worst, given his statement that Brunner is firing him for reasons of political partisanship.

But Battling Bob Bennett should not expect Brunner to back down. She mounted her successful campaign for secretary of state last year by vowing to reform Ohio elections. And making good on her word, she has delivered a big victory by taking down the entire CCBOE - both Democrats and both Republicans. Despite the weak and silly arguments Bennett made to save his ass from the fire of justice, Brunner has shown again that she is impartial in meting out deserved justice to wrongdoers.
Brunner defended her move to fire Bennett here:

"This is about making elections in Cuyahoga County better," she said. "I think he is embarrassing himself. I don't know where he's going to find a court anywhere that says he's entitled to this job." Brunner added that the section in Ohio law that Bennett is challenging is "that section that gives him the right to go through the process. He's challenging some of the safeguards."

THE FLORKIEWICZ FOLLIES - A BLONDE MOMENT?

Playing the Sundance Kid to Bennett's Butch Cassidy, Sally Florkiewicz, Bennett's Republicanoid sidekick on the CCBOE, finally took her dive this week and resigned. But not before dishing out a heaping serving of the same politically bitter stew Bennett had cooked up to deny culpability by blaming it on Democrats like Brunner.

But the hands-down zinger of the week came from Jared Klaus writing in Cleveland Scene Magazine. In his rapier retort, he said Florkiewicz, a member of the Cleveland State University Board of Trustees, was ineffective and deserved to be fired while being brain dead:  

Cuyahoga County Elections Board member Sally Florkiewicz has become the third member of the board to remove herself, following a swift kick in the ass by Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. Last week Brunner ordered the four-member board to resign their positions, or she'd fire them. It's apparently a technique she borrowed from reality, where, unlike in the twisted world of Cuyahoga County, really sucking at your job doesn't get you a promotion.

The two Democrats on the board, Ed Coaxum and Loree Soggs, stepped out of the way last week, leaving the Republicans, Florkiewicz and Chairman Bob Bennett, standing alone in front of the firing squad. In a written statement to the press, Florkiewicz says she will resign her post in order to "serve the community in other ways.

She didn't elaborate on what those ways would be, but it's possible she may donate her brain to science so they can study the effects of doing nothing continuously for years on end.

OLD WARRIOR TOLD TO GIVE UP FOR SAKE OF PARTY'S FUTURE

But Bubble Bob seems to be a party of one these days days and is taking friendly fire from fellow Republicanoids who are asking him, for the sake of the party, to find an exit strategy so his Saddam-like defiance doesn't become inextricably tied to Republicans in Cleveland and across the state who don't want to experience in 2008 the drubbing at the polls they got in 2006.

The question now is not whether Bennett will step down, but when. The Chairman is apparently getting heat from party supporters who are majoritively in favor of his resignation. While there is a strong and somewhat vocal minority that believe he should stay on and fight, Chairman Bennett has apparently seen the handwriting on the wall. The only real hang-up now for Bennett is how to extricate himself without admitting any wrongdoing (which is correct, because even though this board has failed miserably, no apparent signs of malfeasance on his part exist).In exchange for his resignation, the Chairman is believed to want a statement from Brunner absolving him of any blame, and a formal censure of the Cuyahoga County prosecutor for failing to properly advise the board on election procedures and law.

Because he's an attorney, you'd think that if Bennett were counsel to himself he would advise his client to give up and resign, because fighting being fired by Brunner for "good and just causes" is a big-time loosing proposition. But with his frivolous lawsuit claiming Brunner can't fire him for reasons related to the vagueness of "misfeasance and nonfeasance" as contained in the Ohio Constitution, Bennett's battle cry that he's not to blame is definitely loosing steam with a growing number of Republican party members and other political watchers who are telling him to do everyone a favor and step down.

Modernsquire, posting at BuckeyeStateBlog, said what many are thinking:

Bob, why put the taxpayers of Ohio through the expense of a hearing just because you don't want to give up your lil' corner of your political fiefdom?  The case and evidence against the Board is strong and removal is just.  Do the honorable thing and resign and save the taxpayers of Ohio the ridiculous exercise of having to prove the obvious: that under your leadership you ran the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections into the ground almost as badly as your party's leadership has done to Ohio. RESIGN BOB!

Here's another admonishment from another Republicanoid who's been in his share of hot water over the years for some outrageous political stunts he's pulled.

Did you really need the $21,000 per year in salary? You are already making over 200k a year as party chairman, before the other bennies. Does it really make sense to pull the Ohio GOP into a legal pissing contest because you are greedy?  Is this one of the great principles that Republicans will fight Democrats over in the next couple years?  So you can qualify for PERS? Bob, for the party's sake, what's left of it, turn out the lights, shut the door, and call it a day.  The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is screwed up royally, and you were in charge.  You never fixed it.  Just resign, it's long past due.  We Republicans are about taking personal responsibility aren't we? Aren't we?

BENNETT'S DISEASE SPREADING TO ANOTHER OHIO BOE

The Columbus Free Press posted an article about another meltdown in the making, this time in beautiful but poor Hocking County in Ohio's Appalachian region. The article references affidavits that contain statements about the BOE director boasting of holding Republican fundraisers in her BOE executive office.

Meanwhile, another GOP county election official is also under intensifying fire. Lisa Schwartze, executive director of the Hocking County BOE, has been charged with allowing an unmonitored manipulation of electronic memory drives before the 2004 recount could be completed. A memo purportedly written by Schwartze also directs poll workers to recount a precinct chosen deliberately by Schwartze, rather than at random, as the law demands. Two Cuyahoga County poll workers have been convicted of felonies for similar behavior, and have each been sentenced to 18 months in prison.

With so much of Ohio's system of elections muddled by a recent bill on stiffer (suppressive) voter identification the state's Republican-controlled legislature force-fed voters last year, that was further injured by the poor (some say by design) guidance from Ohio's previous secretary of state Ken Blackwell, it's little wonder why things are so messy here and why 88 counties are left dazed and confused by a thicket of laws and rules that make little sense but can cause big problems.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that a criminal investigation is underway which centers on the Cuyahoga BOE's conduct of the November 2006 election. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason has turned again to Erie County Prosecutor Kevin Baxter who recently won felony convictions of two BOE workers for rigging the 2004 presidential recount for another criminal investigation. Baxter will be investigating "possible criminal wrongdoings" related to ballot security and the scanning of absentee ballots.

Coming hot on the heels of the Bennett debacle in Cleveland was a story by The Dayton Daily News, which reported that "After two days of tests, the results are in: About 2,500 people cast ballots in November on 56 malfunctioning electronic touch-screen voting machines in Montgomery County, said Steve Harsman, county board of elections director."

These waves of breaking news about serious problems in the conduct of the 2004 and 2006 elections, and in the performance of electronic voting machines in the two states that have decided the last two presidential elections, make it a virtual certainty that we have barely begun to see the full extent of what has really been done to the American democratic system.

REPUBLICAN PLANS NIXED BY BRUNNER'S BOLD MOVE

Meanwhile, back at the Ohio statehouse, where Republicanoids still rule the show but for the first time in 16 years now have to parley with a Democratic governor, Brunner's move upset several political apple carts that were being readied for market. To peer behind the scenes at the Republican politicking taking place, look here.

CLEVELAND: A SWIRLING MESS AND POLITICAL CAULDRON

But if Cleveland were a boxer, the civic body blows it has sustained over the years, from being ignominiously crowned the nation's largest poor city to the more recent news documenting its mother county's slide in population to the areas accelerating rate of home foreclosures is taking a toll.

And now with Brunner knocking out Bennett and his board from their posts, this bad news may lead to good news, at least for elections being free, fair, open and honest again. As state employees, the quartet of election bosses who were nominated by their respective political parties and approved by then-secretary of state Ken Blackwell, the Republican Bible-thumping social and fiscal conservative who got pounded like salt in last year's race for Ohio governor, serve at the discretion of the state's chief elections office.

Brunner, who made restoring trust and integrity to Ohio elections the pivotal theme of her race for the office in 2006, now holds the office after clobbering her Republican opponent by over one-half million votes, 177,000 of them cast in Cuyahoga. As Ohio's most populous county, it can make or break the political fortunes of statewide candidates and make the White House home for whoever can win Ohio's 20 Electoral College votes, which in large measure is about turning out voters along this part of the North Coast. This was the case in both 2000 and 2004 when George W. Bush became president due to how the voting went (or didn't) in Cuyahoga County.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that a criminal investigation is underway which centers on the Cuyahoga BOE's conduct of the November 2006 election. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason has turned again to Erie County Prosecutor Kevin Baxter who recently won felony convictions of two BOE workers for rigging the 2004 presidential recount for another criminal investigation. Baxter will be investigating "possible criminal wrongdoings" related to ballot security and the scanning of absentee ballots.

WHAT HAPPENS IN CLEVELAND DOESN'T NECESSARILY STAY IN CLEVELAND

For the good of the party the longer that Chairman Bennett and Sally Florkiewicz refuse to step down the more it will appear that it is about the party.

It would be one thing if this was a Cuyahoga County only issue. Given that the Republican Party has NO elected officials in countywide office, I can understand some reticence to a Democratic Secretary of State making demands. But with the onus of the GOP's State Chairman as one of this Board's immovable members, this issue becomes an Ohio issue, which then by nature of Ohio in the scheme of presidential elections becomes a national issue. Add to this the level of national scrutiny that this particular Board of Elections has received for past failures, and you have a Democratic party feeding frenzy on your hands.

David R. Harbarger, a Cleveland-area central committee member and law director of Westlake, said Ken Blackwell was also aware of most of these issues last year and chose not to take any action for the 2004 or 2006 election problems that Brunner claims she is taking action on. Are you saying Blackwell dropped the ball?

There is a massive political agenda here by the opposition who plan to make certain that there is no repeat of 2004 in 2008. They will not stop with the removal of Bob, they will go after anyone who doesn't cave to their voting plans, which include unchecked instant registration, unchecked provisional voting, unchecked and unconfirmed registration and on and on.

I agree with you that this now becomes a partisan issue, and Jennifer Brunner and the Democrats have kicked our butts. The worst thing about it is that we've allowed them to take the offensive under the veil of good government and make our party look bad. Defending the party is one thing, but defending it so that you play into your enemy's hands is another. We're so far into the enemies hands that the time has come to step back, lick our wounds and come prepared to fight a battle of our choosing on a different day. You can fight the good fight and you may eventually win the battle but you will have lost the war.

In a separate but related article on the decline of conservatism, Paul Krugman is on the mark again about it.

Right now the talk of the political chattering classes is a report from the Pew Research Center showing a precipitous decline in Republican support. In 2002 equal numbers of Americans identified themselves as Republicans and Democrats, but since then the Democrats have opened up a 15-point advantage.

Part of the Republican collapse surely reflects public disgust with the Bush administration. The gap between the parties will probably get even wider when -- not if -- more and worse tales of corruption and abuse of power emerge.

The main force driving this shift to the left is probably rising income inequality. According to Pew, there has recently been a sharp increase in the percentage of Americans who agree with the statement that "the rich get richer while the poor get poorer."

And for extra added measure, or the icing on the cake of sinking hopes for Republicanoids in 2008, feast your eyes on this.