VALPARAISO | The high number of unexpected crossover voters -- Republicans voting on the Democratic ballot -- was the reason many polling places ran out of ballots during Tuesday's high-profile primary election, officials said.

More than 80 percent of Porter County voters requested Democratic ballots, according to published election results.

But officials on Wednesday said there was nothing that could have been done differently to prevent it.

In order to receive ballots in time for the election, officials placed their order in February. Kathy Kozuszek, from the Voter Registration office, said there was no way of knowing in February that the presidential primary would still be contested in May.

Porter County Clerk Pam Fish said there was no way to predict the crossover vote, which amounted to more than four Democrat ballots cast for each GOP vote.

"We based all of our calculations on past primaries," Fish said.

Ordering a Republican and Democratic ballot for each of the county's 107,000 voters was not an option financially, Fish said. Each ballot costs 50 cents to print, she said.

Kozuszek said a week or two before the election, she started receiving phone calls from residents asking whether they were allowed to cross over for the primary.

"At that point, a week before the election was too late to do anything," Kozuszek said.

When precinct workers began running low on ballots Tuesday, they tried to contact the voter registration office but had trouble getting through on the phone lines. Kozuszek said the office was fielding a huge number of phone calls from voters asking what precinct they were in and where they were supposed to vote.

Because each ballot includes a specific precinct code, additional ballots needed to be printed from a special machine equipped with the feature. As soon as the county received calls about shortages, they began printing and sending additional forms to the precincts, Kozuszek said.

The Porter County Sheriff's Department, which was on call to monitor the polls already, helped disperse the additional forms. After obtaining a court order to keep the polls open an additional hour, election workers allowed all voters who were in the polling places to cast votes.

"To my knowledge, no voter was turned away unless they didn't want to wait," Kozuszek said.

Times Staff Writer Bob Kasarda contributed to this report.