CROWN POINT | Lake County election officials said Wednesday they plan to streamline their vote-canvassing procedures in the wake of national criticism they didn't report voting results promptly.
Election officials say much of the delay in Tuesday's primary resulted from an erroneous decision to delay the release of voting machine totals -- 92 percent of all the votes counted -- until after they had counted absentee ballots, a time-consuming process. Other counties in the state reported machine votes first.
The Lake County process was criticized as antiquated by national political analysts and media corporations.
And Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita said Lake may be the only urban county in the state to collect votes at a central location. He suggested Lake employ its more than 2,500 polling place workers in the vote count to speed the process.
Lake County Elections Supervisor Michelle Fajman said she believes Lake County's way provides more security against vote fraud, a crime that has plagued Lake County polling in the past. But Fajman concedes improvements need to be made in the process to avoid future national firestorms.
Fajman said under current procedure, the process begins with people casting votes either on paper absentee or provisional ballots or in person on one of more than 1,000 electronic voting machines spread in more than 500 polling places throughout the county.
Fajman said the law should be changed to permit election workers to begin processing absentee votes as soon as possible, rather than having to wait until Election Day.
Following in-person voting on Election Day, Fajman said poll workers remove electronic cards from every voting machine and take the data to one of three locations. They bring any paper ballots they have, as well.
Those in East Chicago and Gary are collected at the Gary/Chicago International Airport for eventual delivery to the central counting location in the Lake County Government Center in Crown Point.
Votes cast in Hammond, Highland, Munster and Whiting are delivered to the Wicker Park Social Center in Highland for delivery to Crown Point.
Poll workers from other communities bring their paper and electronic ballots directly to Crown Point.
Fajman said the Gary Airport and Wicker Park distribution centers were created to reduce long lines that used to form when all poll workers went to Crown Point.
She said election workers in Crown Point manually scan paper ballots and download the voting data into a digital bank that generates totals.
She said glitches in the process occurred Tuesday when at least one poll worker failed to promptly deliver cards or paper ballots to central counting. Lake County police had to be sent to find the missing votes.
Polling place workers failed in a few instances to properly record voting data, requiring early morning telephone calls to access the information, she added.
