Ballot Battle Popping in Indiana

But Lake County Democratic Party Chairman Rudy Clay argues that the vote didn't need to be unanimous, saying, "The vote has to be unanimous in satellite offices, but the law specifically says you can open the centers in clerk's offices. That is what we want to do. If not, the people in the north end of the county will be disenfranchised."

Forty percent of the county's population lives in Hammond, East Chicago and Gary.

Democrats immediately filed a claim in the federal court that will be heard today, ratcheting up the stakes and alleging voter disenfranchisement, a violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.

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The Note

In court filings, Democrats accuse Republicans of "compelling the Lake County Board of Elections to open early-voting locations only in predominately white parts of Lake County and to shutter early-voting locations that had previously been open in predominately minority parts of Lake County."

Republicans had no objection to the remote offices being opened during the state's Democratic primary.

The judge will have to sort out the issues. Lawyers from Chicago and Indianapolis have been brought in to represent the various parties.

Voter Fraud

Republicans say they believe the hearing camouflages the real problem: voter fraud.

"They are trying to make this a racial issue," says John Curley, chairman of the Lake County Republicans. "Meanwhile, the voting activist group ACORN is bringing in massive amounts of registrations that are mostly phony."

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, which works to register low-income people, told the Associated Press in Connecticut that such complaints are part of a coordinated effort by Republicans to discredit its voter registration drives across the nation.

But Curley believes the federal litigation distracts from the issue of voter fraud that has plagued his county before.

He points to hundreds of voter registration forms that have arrived in the mail, which he claims are "mostly fraudulent."

One application was delivered in August and signed by a Jimmy Johns of 10839 Broadway. The application is signed and dated, but calls to the phone number listed on the application reveal that it is for a Jimmy Johns restaurant in Crown Point.