Sorry, Wellard.... they were NOT "republican party officials". They were election workers... by definition (as far as it can go), non-partisan. They did not work for or represent the republican party.
In fact, they crossed party lines in their own politics. Jaqueline Maiden, one of the two women and the third-ranking employee in the county, is a Democrat, and the other, Kathleen Dreamer, ballot manager, is a Republican.
The prosecutor in the case also made no claims that their actions impacted the results of the election.
For a source, I'll claim the
Toledo Blade... a local Ohio newspaper from one of the larger cities (and about 90 minutes from Cleveland, located in Cuyahoga county which hosted the recount in question).
Ohio law states that during a recount each county is supposed to randomly count at least 3 percent of its ballots by hand and by machine. If there are not discrepancies in those counts, the rest of the votes can be recounted by machine. A full hand-count is ordered if two random samples result in differences.
So it's not like they picked specific votes to count. They counted 3% of the votes by machine and by hand, and the counts matched. Kerry actually gained 17 votes while Bush lost 6.
I've seen claims that "with six more votes in each precinct, Kerry would have won" and similar things. Those are simple fancy illogical math... with "one more dollar for every hour I was awake", I'd have $5,000 more every year. Doesn't mean that it would happen or that it has any relevance. Just a nice "what-if".
Florida's confusion was apparently because the media made its projections after the polls closed in the parts of the state in Eastern Time. Those in Central time still had an hour to go... shame on the media.