Indiana too close to call?

Indeed, as I wrote earlier this evening, the Democratic primary in Indiana has become quite interesting. It’s nearly 10pm Pacific, the Democratic primary results are close, and CNN is focusing on why the count is so slow in Lake County, Indiana …

Given the heavy turnout in Indiana, and in particular the large number of early and absentee ballots cast in Indiana, it’s no surprise that we are still waiting for final results. It might be some time until we know who wins in Indiana!

As an update, I found the following description of local procedures from the Washington Post:

Clay (Gary mayor) said the results were late coming in from Lake County because of the large numbers of absentee ballots that had to be counted — about 11,000. Under local practice, all of the cartridges from voting machines in Gary and nearby East Chicago are first collected at the local airport before being driven to the county headquarters to be tallied with the results from the rest of the county, he said. He said there were no major technical problems holding up the count.

“It takes a little time. We want to be sure that every vote is counted fair and right,” he said. “I just talked to the director out there and they are working like junkyard dogs to get that done as soon as possible. They are taking some time but I told them to do it right. That’s what taking the time.”