CLEVELAND -- After weeks of waiting, the counting is over and the votes have been certified, NewsChannel5 reported.

The unofficial results showed President George W. Bush defeating Democrat John Kerry by 136,000 votes in Ohio, but this was prior to provisional ballots being counted.

In Cuyahoga County, 24,000 provisional ballots were counted, which did not change the outcome of the election.

Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Director Michael Vu said getting to this point wasn't easy.

"Over 600,068 people were certified today, and we counted 68-percent turnout," Vu said. "Out of the million registered voters, we had -- it was actually the largest election this county has ever seen."

Election officials said they rejected a third of the provisional ballots, mostly because they discovered that they were cast by citizens who were not registered voters.