Ind. judge sides with Democrats in early voting

CROWN POINT, Ind. -- A Lake County judge ordered local election officials Tuesday to immediately open satellite early voting centers in Gary, Hammond and East Chicago, but it remained unclear how long polling could take place.

Lake Circuit Judge Lorenzo Arredondo sided with Democrats and two unions in ordering the in-person absentee voting sites opened in the three urban centers to supplement early voting already available in the county seat of Crown Point, more than 10 miles away.

Lake County Elections Board Director Sally LaSota said she would open the satellite voting centers later Tuesday.

It was not immediately clear how long they could continue operating once opened. A second Lake County judge, Superior Court's Calvin Hawkins, had a hearing scheduled Tuesday afternoon on a temporary restraining order barring the centers from opening.

Jim Wieser, an attorney for Democrats and the Steelworkers and Service Employees International unions, noted Arredondo consolidated the case in Hawkins' court with the one in his own.

"As far as we're concerned, it's over. My feeling is that there's nothing to be heard in that (Hawkins') court," Wieser said.

However, Indiana Republican Party spokesman Jay Kenworthy said the GOP expected to fare better before Hawkins and for the matter to land soon before the Indiana Supreme Court.

"We're just going to let the legal process work," Kenworthy said.

Vote-counting in the county adjacent to Chicago came under scrutiny in May, when late returns delayed the results of Indiana's heated Democratic presidential primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, who won by a narrow margin.

Hawkins last week granted the restraining order at Republicans' request, but Arredondo ruled separately to open the centers. Democrats took the case to U.S. District Court, where Judge Joseph Van Bokkelen ruled Monday he did not have jurisdiction and sent the case back to the local courts.

Wieser said one of the plaintiffs he represented, Roxanna Lugo of Hammond, would be disenfranchised without the additional early voting centers because she works in Chicago, boarding a train every day at 6:15 a.m. and not returning home until 7:30 p.m. Polling places in Indiana are open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Election Day.

"We're very pleased by the ruling," Wieser said after Arredondo ruled. "We think the ruling is absolutely correct under the law and in the spirit of free and open elections in the Indiana Constitution."

Thousands of residents already have voted early in person at the Lake County Government Complex in Crown Point. But Wieser said the additional early voting sites in Gary, Hammond and East Chicago might serve as many as 30,000 people.

State law requires each county to open at least one location for people to vote early in person between Oct. 6 and Nov. 3. The law permits more early voting locations if a county's bipartisan elections board unanimously approves them.

Two Republicans on the Lake County Election Board voted against the satellite sites last month on grounds that in-person absentee voting would make vote fraud easier. The board's three Democrats decided they could institute the early voting centers without GOP support, triggering the court battle.

Gary Mayor Rudy Clay, a Democrat, rejected claims that early voting would increase the possibility of vote fraud, telling WGN-TV that such suggestions were a "smoke screen."

"In Gary, Indiana, never in the history of this town that I know of, at least in the past 40 years, no one has ever been indicted for vote fraud," Clay said. "It's not going to happen this time.

"They're trying to bamboozle the people by saying vote fraud. That's not true. All we are saying is, let the people vote."