HAMMOND | Labor and civil rights organizations urged Lake County officials to open early voting centers Tuesday in the county's largest cities.

"We don't want to see long lines and voters having to face the choice of missing work and taking an economic loss to vote," said Jim Robinson, United Steelworkers District 7 director, speaking outside of the Hammond courthouse. The courthouse is one of the three proposed early voting centers tied up in federal litigation by Republicans who claim it would be a doorway to vote fraud.

"Nobody is voting here today," he said of Hammond. "This disadvantages thousands in north county."

Roosevelt Phillips, 38, a part-time home health care nurse in Gary, stated in a letter to a federal judge that his job takes him all over the county. Its unpredictable hours threaten his vote.

"If in-person absentee voting were permitted only in Crown Point, my right to vote early would be seriously burdened," Phillips said in the letter, which was presented in a gathering outside of the Hammond courthouse.

The Indiana State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Service Employees International Union have intervened in the lawsuit regarding the early voting centers on behalf of Phillips and others who claim their jobs or family obligations and a lack of public transportation make it difficult to vote on Nov. 4 or travel to Crown Point for early voting.