As part of a slightly modified proposal, Brunner has agreed that if any additional money is needed in the testing she will first seek federal funding and that she will not charge county elections boards if any machines are damaged during testing.

She also agreed to pushing back the end of the testing period by one week to Dec. 7 and to creating a bipartisan group of election officials to devise testing criteria and then review the results and finalize recommendations, which will be presented to Governor Ted Strickland and legislative leaders, who these days are still all Republicans.

In a separate but related development, the the Cuyahoga Board of Election (CBOE) has already expanded its testing of vote-counting procedures to avoid a repeat of a "botched 2006 primary," according to Jane Platten, the board's new director, who told the Associated Press that the board has been working with its voting machine supplier, Diebold Inc.'s Premier Election Solutions, to resolve problems including the computer capacity needed to count votes from each community and more than 1,400 precincts, many with different ballots.

In the same article, Mark Radke, vice president of communications for Premier Election Solutions, formerly know as Diebold, which was a no-show at a recently held public forum organized by the CBOE, said the company was awaiting state testing of voting machines - which was green lighted today in Columbus by state lawmakers - and was willing at that time to discuss any issue in detail.

MANTRA TO BRUNNER: BE FAIR

Saying it's time to put at least some of the conspiracy theories to rest in Ohio, this editorial likely represents what others are thinking that despite testing undertaken by Brunner's controversial Republican predecessor, J. Kenneth Blackwell, maybe critics of the two-term Ohio SOS who have accused him of rigging the state's election system to favor Republicans, especially President Bush's re-election in 2004, will change their mind if a new round of testing under Brunner -- a Democrat -- can lay such accusations to rest.

Wheeling Intelligencer Editorial: "The simple facts of life concerning honest elections in Ohio are that it would be virtually impossible to rig the system to favor any candidate or party. That is because county election boards are composed of representatives of both political parties. And, of course, the process of buying new voting machines and installing them in county and statewide systems has been a very public one, scrutinized every step of the way.".

CRITICS WEIGHT IN

In the most strident analysis of the two week delay caused by Republican lawmakers, two outspoken critics of Blackwell, who they contend "helped engineer the theft of Ohio's electoral votes for George W. Bush in 2004," also took potshots at Brunner for not being more aggressive when it was learned that 56 of Ohio's 88 boards of elections had disposed of federally protected material from the 2004 election.

The two Columbus Free Press authors also dinged Brunner for publicly expressing her doubts that irregularities that defined the Ohio vote in 2004 could have been intentional.

At the same time article authors Fitrakis and Wasserman applaud Brunner for carrying out her campaign promise to test Ohio's electronic voting machines, they also wonder how its possible that tests conducted by the federal Government Accountability Office, Princeton University, Johns Hopkins, the Brennan Center, the Carter-Baker Election Commission, John Conyer's House Judiciary Committee and others, all showing that electronic voting machines are unreliable and easily rigged, will produce different results in Ohio.