| GARY, Ind. (AP) -- 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. SAVE MONEY ON TRAVEL DEALS 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."
Associated Press writers Tom Davies and Tom Murphy contributed to this story from Indianapolis. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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