1...2...5 (3, sir!)

Lake County took a lot of national abuse for not getting ballots counted promptly on election night. It was well after 10 PM Central time before the county began reporting any numbers.

Many folks in the national media assumed some kind of shenanigans was going on. This is, after all, the most politically corrupt county in the nation. One CBS reporter contacted the Post-Tribune (a local paper) and asked if Lake was borrowing from Cook County (Chicago) politics, but really, the Cook County folks are jealous of what goes on here.

CNN and Fox News had a field day with Lake County also. Here is a link to a snippet of Wolf Blitzing Gary Mayor (and county Dem chair) Rudy Clay.

The official explanation was that the county decided not to release numbers until after the over 11,000 absentee ballots had been counted. Counting that many ballots takes a lot of time. After all, each counter only has 20 fingers and toes (in most cases).

I think they were just trying to get a little spotlight on themselves by reporting last, and by possibly changing a close presidential race. If that was the plan, it failed because the Clinton-Obama race wasn't that close.

However, the race between the democratic candidates for governor, Jim Schellenger and Jill Long-Thompson, was neck-and-neck all night, with Schellenger up by a slim margin before Lake County reported. The late Lake numbers were enough to put Long-Thompson past Schellenger for the win. Long-Thompson had been endorsed by the steelworkers union, so it was expected she would do well here.

The play for attention worked, though, but probably not the way they hoped. Now, the entire nation thinks our county is either run by idiots who can't even count, or is so corrupt that they'll try to fix an election even in the bright spotlight of the national media. Correct on both counts.

The best and most ironic comment on this was in the Times (another local paper) this morning. George Van Til, the county surveyor, said we (the county) look "stupid" because of all this. This comes from a guy who won reelection in spite of the fact that he stole gas from the county and let his teenage son drive his county-issued car around - until he got caught. It's not the inability to count votes that makes us look stupid. It's continuing to elect guys like him.