At 7 p.m. on Election Night in the Post-Tribune newsroom, reporters knew what to expect from Lake County voting officials. For years, probably decades, Lake County has been notorious for dragging its heels in announcing voter results to local media outlets.
And I’m sure Lake County voting officials, and politicians, couldn’t care less that media outlets like the P-T have to scramble during every election to get the most updated numbers before rushing to print that night.
Well, well, well, finally Lake County has been caught with its fat-cat hands in the cookie jar of chronic ineptitude - and alleged corruption once again - under the white-hot glare of the national spotlight.
Here we are at literally the last minute on Election Night (11:59 p.m.) and Lake County still hasn’t announced its final vote tallies for the oh-so-tight Democratic presidential primary between Sens. Obama and Clinton.
Oh sure, local media members are used to such Election Night shenanigans. But national media outlets - waiting with bated breath on the pivotal results for an historic presidential election - just don’t understand. And rightfully so. Why should they?
At midnight, CNN-TV political experts and pundits grilled Gary Mayor Rudy Clay, asking him several times – in several different ways – why Lake County vote tallies were still not completed, even though the much larger Marion County’s results were tallied hours earlier.
Clay, the county’s Democratic chairman, could only repeat the same tired mantra about 11,000 early voting ballots that held up the overall count.
One analyst even hinted at possible backroom dirty dealings with the vote count, prompting Clay to proclaim, ”There is no hanky-panky going on here in Lake County Indiana.”
The CNN analysts politely listened, but Clay clearly looked like a fool in front of millions of TV viewers.
They then turned to Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr., asking him the same question.
McDermott smartly admitted that Lake County’s delay (i.e. chronic ineptitude and cavalier attitude, for those of us who live here) may be casting the county in a bad national light. It was obvious that McDermott, a Clinton supporter, wanted nothing to do with the lame explanations of Clay, an Obama supporter.
McDermott even challenged Clay on the air to explain why vote tallies were delayed so long even though the county now uses computers. Clay still didn’t have a good reply.
But McDermott did.
“I’m frustrated, and it makes it look like something corrupt may be happening,” he told CNN at 12:06 a.m.
Yeah, it may.
But everyone in this region knows better: It’s just politics as usual on another Election Night in Lake County. Only this time the rest of the country gets to see Lake County politics as usual, too.
What a shame, for all of us in Northwest Indiana.
