Gary, Indiana - One Vote Over the Line for Obama Campaign - UPDATE - Las Vegas!

We should consider this a warning, there will be election problems in Lake County, Indiana. Laura Washington, the Sun Times columnist, De Paul prof and former In These Times editor wrote another of her election roundups and as usual it is informative, especially the section concerning Gary, Indiana. That is Gary of Lake County, Indiana, the same Lake County that is having such big problems with fraudulent voter registrations and the same Lake County that Flying Debris commented on here just two days ago:

Barack Obama's former employer, ACORN (where he was a "community organizer") has just turned in thousands of fraudulent voter registrations in Lake County, Indiana. This follows reports from the primary that Chicagoans were attempting to vote in Lake County and that people were bused in from elsewhere, that students were taken out of school and bused to polling places. A documentary concerning fraud in this year's Democratic Caucuses even examined polling in Lake County, among other things they found gang intimidation (starting at 4:00 minutes) in Lake County. The first linked article mentions that telephone lines at the ACORN offices in Gary, Milwaukee and Chicago were reported to be disconnected, here is what I found: the Gary office has an anonymous recorded message voice mail that appears to be from their telephone service company, the Milwaukee line has been disconnected and the Chicago line appears to be up but the nested menu often reconnects to itself. This is more of the hopeful Chicago politics that the Obama campaign is bringing to America, this is Democratic "reform."

Washington's Sun Times column covers a number of issues but here are the relevant paragraphs (emphasis mine):

On Nov. 4, Gary, Ind., could end up as ground zero of the political universe. Indiana was the firewall state in the 2008 Democratic primary season. Hillary Clinton won that battle, but lost the war.

Rudy Clay, the flamboyant and pertinacious Gary mayor, was the star of that drama. Although Clinton prevailed in the May 6 primary, the returns from Clay's stomping grounds came in so late that Clinton was denied a victory speech in prime time. Clinton supporters accused Clay of sabotaging the counting.

Clay claims the process was slowed by a deluge of early-voting ballots. "We were not doing that on purpose," he told me the other day. "It just looked that way." I could almost see his grin over the phone.

Once again Indiana is hotly contested territory, and Gary could be pivotal.

"No Democrat has ever won the state of Indiana without winning Gary. We are not going to break precedent now," Clay proclaimed.

His voters will bring it in for Obama because they know how to count, Clay added.

"We are spending $10 [billion] to $12 billion a month in Iraq, and in Gary we can't get $12 to fix a pothole."

State Sen. Earline Rogers, a lead coordinator of the get-out-the vote effort, is also counting -- and confident. The Gary native has served in the Indiana legislature for 26 years.

"We are trying to be extremely careful," she said, "because the rest of the state looks at us as sort of the 'Cook County of Indiana.' " (Senator, nice try, but don't even think about snatching that esteemed title away from us.)

Obama lost the Indiana primary by about 14,000 votes. Rogers calculates that 19,000 registered Gary voters did not show up at the polls in May. "We can make up that difference," she said.

We should all be worried about vote fraud in Gary and elsewhere in Lake County, Indiana. This is the new kind of politics? This is the change we've been waiting for? These are the people we've been waiting for?

UPDATE: The ACORN office in Las Vegas has been raided by Nevada State officials today! The Gateway Pundit has the story!