Lake County, Indiana, which includes Gary, has still not reported any precincts tonight, apparently because they’re still counting absentee ballots there, the Gary newspaper reports on its website:
Rudy Clay, the chairman of the Lake County Democratic Party, said the counting of 11,000 absentee ballots is delaying the announcement of vote totals here. Although U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton holds a slim lead over U.S. Sen. Barack Obama in Indiana, most networks are waiting for Lake County’s vote to call the state.
For an hour or two now it’s seemed clear that the result in Indiana is going to come down to the results in Lake County and the city of Gary. Now this from the Post …
As the fate of a nailbiter Indiana primary — and possibly the course of the Democratic race — hung on his city, Gary Mayor Rudy Clay said just now that it might take a while yet to finish counting the vote in Lake County, which includes Gary, and said that his city had turned out so overwhelmingly for Barack Obama that it might just be enough to close the gap with Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“Let me tell you, when all the votes are counted, when Gary comes in, I think you’re looking at something for the word to see,” Clay, an Obama supporter, said in a telephone interview from Obama’s Gary headquarters. “I don’t know what the numbers are yet, but Gary has absolutely produced in large numbers for Obama here.”
Clay said the results were late coming in from Lake County because of the large numbers of absentee ballots that had to be counted — about 11,000. Under local practice, all of the cartridges from voting machines in Gary and nearby East Chicago are first collected at the local airport before being driven to the county headquarters to be tallied with the results from the rest of the county, he said. He said there were no major technical problems holding up the count.
Here’s some more from the blog of one of the local papers …
With Hillary Clinton’s statewide lead under 40,000, the pending results from Lake County loom large.
While Clinton reportedly led voting in cities like Hammond, Whiting and East Chicago, Gary Mayor Rudy Clay is indicating a huge margin in favor of Obama in his city.
It’s very lopsided,” Clay said, pointing to a hand-written list of precinct results.According to his numbers, in most districts Clinton’s turnout in the city of Gary was near non-existent. One district saw 126 voters turn out for Obama, while only four voted for Clinton.
Clay said the election is seeing a record turnout in the city.
“We’re used to having maybe a 22, 23 percent turnout for a primary. We’re seeing numbers as high as 85 to 95 percent,” Clay said. “The Gary people took care of business.”
A hand-written list of precinct results?
First results reported in Lake County, 75%-25% for Obama with 28% reporting. If he maintains that margin in Lake County he wins the state. But it all depends where in the county those results are from.
The margin is now about 20,000 votes separating the two statewide.
Hillary’s speech tonight in Indiana was written as a victory speech, but at this hour the outcome in Indiana remains in doubt:
NBC just reported that Hillary Clinton is holding no public events tomorrow. We’d earlier reported that she’d cancelled her morning show appearances. But that’s not that surprising. There’s not a lot good to talk about. But canceling all public appearances, if that’s what they’re saying, is a different story.
Lake County Republican Chairman John Curley stood by his Democratic counterpart Rudy Clay as the nation waited for vote totals from Lake County. “There’s no hanky panky going on,” Curley said after members of the national media wondered why Lake County’s votes were taking so much longer to count than the rest of the state. “We have more than 11,000 absentee ballots, far more than we’ve ever had before,” Curley said, insisting it simply takes time to get through that many tallies.
The two party chairmen planned to meet at the government center at about 11 p.m., and Curley promised the vote totals would soon be released.
After initially canceling public appearances today, Hillary has added a public event to her schedule.
TPM Election Central has confirmed that Hillary Clinton has personally loaned her campaign $6.4 million in the past month.