Indiana's primary turnout high, despite photo ID law

Indiana's controversial photo identification rule may not have made a major dent in the state's high turnout, but it did frustrate a small group of voters more accustomed to divine law.

About 12 elderly Roman Catholic nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow members of Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, even though they had been told earlier that they would need to get such an ID to vote.

"One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, 'I don't want to go do that,'" McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drive.

Elsewhere across the pivotal state, voting appeared to run smoothly, despite the fears of some elections experts that the photo ID law could cause confusion at the polls.

More than 1.6 million votes were cast Tuesday in the Democratic and GOP presidential races with nearly all precincts reporting, according to unofficial tallies by The Associated Press. That smashed the 1992 primary turnout of a little more than 1 million votes.

A high number of Republican crossover votes sent several counties scrambling to print extra ballots. A judge ordered some polls in northwestern Indiana's Porter County to stay open an additional hour after several precincts ran out of Democratic ballots.

Nancy Zondor, of Chesterton, said she went to vote at her Porter County polling site around 4 p.m. only to be told she would have to wait or come back later for a ballot. She said she had to leave without voting in order to drive to her son's track meet.

"I was aggravated, for sure, it's a big election," said Zondor, who planned to vote for Obama. "I just always vote in every election and want to."

Marion County, the state's most populous, had to print several thousand extra Democratic ballots because of increased demand in traditionally Republican voting areas, said Angie Nussmeyer, spokeswoman for the clerk's office.

Other ballot shortages were reported in Howard, Jackson and Hancock counties as voters turned out in droves. Local voting officials printed substitute ballots that were to be counted by hand.

Polling locations reported voter totals that far exceeded previous primaries. More than 80,000 people voted in Fort Wayne's Allen County and nearly 22,000 people voted in southern Indiana's Floyd County -- both double the 1992 turnout.

Some 70 percent of the presidential votes cast statewide were Democratic ballots, with even heavily Republican counties such as Johnson County in suburban Indianapolis having more than 60 percent of its votes in the Barack Obama-Hillary Rodham Clinton race.

The turnout followed a month of record absentee voting with 173,000 ballots cast in person or by mail through Monday, according to the Indiana secretary of state's office. That is more than three times the number of early ballots cast in the 2004 presidential primary.

Many feared Indiana's photo ID law -- the strictest in the country -- would depress turnout. The Republican-led effort was designed to combat ballot fraud, but critics said it disproportionately affected minorities and elderly voters. Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that the law did not violate the Constitution.

A group of voting rights advocates that established a hot line reported receiving several calls from would-be voters who were turned away at precincts because they lacked state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

One newly married woman said she was told she couldn't vote because her driver's license name didn't match the one on her voter registration record, said Myrna Perez of the Brennan Center Justice at New York University's law school, coordinator of the hot line. Another woman said she was turned away from casting her first-ever ballot because she had only a college-issued ID card and an out-of-state driver's license, Perez said.

"These laws are confusing. People don't know how they're supposed to be applied," she said.