Well Now … Hold The Phone In Indiana
History Of Corruption Clouds Primary In Northern Indiana
GARY, Ind. - It was midnight and the nation was still awaiting results from the Indiana primary, one of the biggest remaining prizes of the epic Democratic presidential battle between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.
But as the clock ticked, the questions and accusations grew louder: What was wrong in Lake County? Was this more politics as usual in a county often suspected of harboring Chicago-style corruption?
A day after Clinton eked out a narrow victory in the primary, no one raised allegations of illegal activity. But some say old-school politics were certainly at play in the state’s second-largest county, at the southern tip of Lake Michigan.
“They wanted to put Barack Obama over the top with Lake County’s vote and games were being played like in the 1950s,” said Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott, who endorsed Clinton. “It went bad when a lot of people were watching.”
The late returns came in a primary that attracted record voter turnout across the state. Many counties ran short of Democratic ballots and had to print extras, which had to be counted by hand. In Lake County alone, voters cast 11,500 early ballots—about three times the number cast in the 2004 primary.
Other counties, including Marion, the state’s most populous and home of Indianapolis, also saw record turnouts. But those results were posted hours earlier.
The delay, combined with Lake County’s history of fraud and corruption at the polls, set tongues wagging.
McDermott and Gary Mayor Rudy Clay—both Democrats who lead the county’s two largest cities—sniped at each other in appearances on CNN early Wednesday, with McDermott challenging Clay on why machine totals weren’t available earlier.
Clay, an Obama supporter who is the county’s Democratic chairman, denied any misdeeds and defended the county’s handling of the vote tally.
“Anytime you vote an additional 11,000 early voters with the same number of staff that you have all the time, I think that the election board staff did a tremendous job in the time that they had to do it in,” he said.
Lake County election administrator Michelle Fajman said local officials would review their process of trying to tally absentee ballots at a central location before counting the 133,000 ballots cast on voting machines at the county’s 500-plus precincts. But she said she saw no evidence of an effort to hold back the count Tuesday night.
“We did get started late, but I do consider it a success,” Fajman said. “We would rather give you good totals than piecemeal totals.”
Gary, the largest city in Lake County, was being watched closely because of expectations that much of its vote would go to Obama and might propel him to victory in the state, which Clinton needed to win to keep her candidacy alive. The city’s population of 100,000 is about 85 percent black, and its proximity to Obama’s hometown of Chicago made it a likely stronghold for the Illinois senator.
Obama prevailed countywide by more than 10 percentage points, although Clinton narrowly won the statewide vote.
Lake County’s history of corruption raised concerns that something more suspicious had gone wrong.
In 1962, Attorney General Robert Kennedy called Lake County one of the most corrupt counties in the nation. In 2004, the state Supreme Court tossed out a mayoral election in East Chicago because of campaign misconduct that resulted in dozens of voter-fraud convictions.
In 2005, former congresswoman Katie Hall resigned as the Gary city clerk after pleading guilty to federal mail-fraud charges. That case resulted from accusations that she made office workers raise money for her re-election campaigns in order to keep their jobs.
Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter, whose office helped investigate the East Chicago voter-fraud cases, said he believed the county’s political process had improved in recent years.
“It took years for the reputation to become as poor as it is, and it is going take years to correct it, rehabilitate it,” said Carter, a Republican who is the state chairman for John McCain’s campaign.
Some Lake County leaders tried Wednesday to play down the county’s past, insisting that Tuesday’s votes were counted fairly and accurately—albeit slowly.
“They wanted to make certain that there was accuracy in what they did,” said veteran Democratic state Sen. Earline Rogers of Gary. “It seemed as though the press was trying to get Lake County to yield to their time schedule.”
But she conceded the national attention might be a wake-up call. “We need to do a little bit better job on how we handle this process.”
(AP)
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Okay, I have lived or live in Lake County, Porter County, and LaPorte County, Indiana. I have commuted to downtown Chicago everyday for 20 years. I have said elsewhere, that the only county more corrupt than Cook County, Illinois, is Lake County, Indiana. Cook County is famous for taking boxes of paper ballots by truck to some location to be counted. My husband and I knew the minute we heard of the delay, that someone was going to get f’ed, we just didn’t know who. Yes, they tried very hard to put BO over the top. I say bring him on. Half his party still doesn’t want him to be CIC. By the way, if you’re looking for a home, home prices in Gary, Indiana start at $1,000 (nope, that is no typo)…
May 7th, 2008 at 4:29 pmBETWEEN OBAMA’S SPEECHES AND HILLARY’S SCREECHES,
May 7th, 2008 at 4:38 pmWILL WE EVER BE RID OF THESE PARASITIC LEECHES,
WITH THUNDER THIGHS ON HER BROOM,
AND THE FLIM FLAMMER PREACHING DOOM,
LET US CLOSE THE CRAPPER DOOR ON THESE TWO SONS A BEECHES.
Gary, Ind.
Ain’t that where the Jacksons (Michael and the other loser Five and then some) hail from?
May 7th, 2008 at 4:39 pmLMFAO @ your pic Drill -
May 7th, 2008 at 4:52 pmGary Indiana. Good Lord is that place a dump.
I was stationed there for awhile & I blew every red light/stop sign when traveling to & fro.
I wasn’t about to stop for shit.
May 7th, 2008 at 5:00 pmDrillanwr: Yes, the Jackson Five is originally from Gary Indiana. Their tiny house they grew up in (where Joe beat them) I believe still stands. Leatherneck: Yes, it still is a dump. About a year or so ago,they filmed a documentary on Fallujah in downtown Gary. That probably tells you all you need to know.
If Hillary is smart, she should make a huge ordeal out of this voter fraud shit.
May 7th, 2008 at 5:07 pmI lived the first 18 years of my life in Gary. I guarantee you there was fraud there yesterday.
What you saw yesterday is an old trick, which I have seen before: They hold back their results until they see how many votes are needed for the machine’s candidate, and then they manufacture them. People who don’t vote during the day have their vote cast for them after the polls close, for the machine’s candidate, in this case, Obama.
I have had relatives who moved out of town and could not get their name taken off the voter rolls, because the machine needed them as active voters for just this purpose, and the records show them voting for years after they left town.
Oh, yeah, I knew what was happening as I watched last night. They couldn’t make enough votes to swing the state for Obama, but they got him a couple of extra delegates and rained on Hillary’s parade, and that was enough for their purposes.
May 7th, 2008 at 7:13 pmA P.S. nods to my oldest daughter Sara for the above picture she stumbled across today while online …
I hoped all the rest of the afternoon for a Hillary story to use it on.
May 7th, 2008 at 7:51 pmNot a word of truth from either POS Dhimmicrat candidate.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:09 pmWell, I did hear one from Obama in his well attended NC speech last night. “Sacrifice”. That’s Dhimmicrat code for Ima gonna fuck you AND take your money.
I can stand those fuckin’ asshole democrat pigs. They’re evil.
May 8th, 2008 at 2:15 amWhere’s the edit function? I meant I CAN’T stand the defeatotreasonocrats . FUCK ‘EM ALL!
May 8th, 2008 at 2:16 am
May 8th, 2008 at 3:19 am