CROWN POINT | The nation watched Tuesday night as Lake County election officials held the fate of the Democratic presidential primary in their hands -- and held it, and held it and held it.

The delay provoked a broadside of allegations from national, state and local pundits of election trickery in a county infamous for vote fraud and political corruption. The firestorm continued into Wednesday -- long after election tallies were finalized -- with national news crews storming the Lake County Government Complex in Crown Point, demanding answers to the county's delayed results.

To one Lake County political leader, the county looked "stupid."

"Lake County didn't win last night," Lake County Surveyor George Van Til said. "We look stupid."

He said this is not the first time the county has been late with election results.

"The only problem is, this time the whole world was watching," he said.

Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott, a Sen. Hillary Clinton supporter, complained live on CNN on Tuesday, "The appearance of impropriety is high" and demanded that Gary Mayor Rudy Clay, the county Democratic chairman and a Sen. Barack Obama supporter, "release the numbers."

Clay responded, "There is no hanky-panky going on here in Lake County."

But Clay conceded Wednesday improvement was needed.

"We're going to make some changes," he said. "We've got to do better. Things will be different in November (for the general election)."

Clay did not elaborate on the changes.

The Lake County Elections and Registration Board finally posted complete unofficial vote totals nearly 12 hours after the polls closed.

Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, a Munster native, complained the incident was a fiasco that squandered Indiana's moment in the national spotlight. He questioned why Indianapolis, Fort Wayne and Evansville could deliver accurate vote totals so much faster and said Lake County could use a larger and better-trained election staff.

"Get the information out, even on a rolling basis, as quickly as possible," Rokita suggested. The best compliment he could pay Lake County was that he hadn't seen evidence of anything "nefarious going on."

A CNN satellite truck was parked outside the government center early Wednesday, and reporters besieged sleepy-eyed officials to explain what went wrong.

The answer according to Clay, Elections Board Director Sally LaSota and Elections Supervisor Michelle Fajman was a combination of a large voter turnout -- by in-person, absentee and early ballots -- that overwhelmed polling staff and strategic mistakes.

"In hindsight, we should have released the machine vote earlier," LaSota said, referring to a way the firestorm could have been avoided.

Election board attorney David Saks called Tuesday's primary unique, saying the county had "special pressure" from national onlookers to provide reliable numbers and that delaying the release of results was the right thing to do.

"Piecemeal releases can throw the whole country off," he said.

Staff writers Joe Carlson and Patrick Guinane contributed to this story.