On Saturday, I laid out the basis for the voters' rights battle brewing in Lake County, IN. Essentially, the GOP apparatus there is trying to block efforts to open up early voting centers in three populous, minority-rich cities on the northern edge of the county -- Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago. Instead, the Republicans want voters in those areas to travel south to Crown Point, where the sole early voting center is currently located.
On Friday, a federal judge scheduled an October 9 hearing to consider the GOP's temporary restraining order (TRO) seeking to block early voting in the three northern locations. He also got an agreement from the county board of elections to hold off on opening those voting centers until he had ruled on the TRO.
However, new developments today may lead the board to open early voting in the three cities in the next 24 hours.
According to sources in Lake County, a group of plaintiffs filed a separate lawsuit in Indiana Circuit Court this morning asserting that the ongoing early voting in Crown Point -- but not in Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago -- represented a violation of the state constitution. Judge Lorenzo Arredondo agreed and today approved a TRO instructing early voting to commence in these three locales. The plaintiffs included the local steelworkers and teachers unions, along with State Sen. Earline Rogers and a county resident.
Considering that the federal hearing is delayed until Thursday, it's unclear what exactly is going to happen. But I hear that it's possible the three satellite locations will open as early as tomorrow.
There's also some interesting backstory to this. As Blue Indiana explained yesterday, the GOP should have filed their original TRO in Arredondo's court, but instead submitted it to the superior court, where a friendlier judge presided. Not surprisingly, the board of elections quickly moved to have the case transferred to federal court, where the judge who scheduled the Thursday hearing "was apparently not amused" and quickly vacated the superior court's approval of the TRO. It appears Arredondo wasn't all that amused himself.
The plaintiffs and lawyers are scheduled to hold a press conference on the matter tomorrow. We'll have more developments as they arise.
