Progress Illinois

Of all the surprises to emerge from the 2008 electoral map, Barack Obama's victory in Indiana has to be the sweetest.  And most impressive.  Every single county in the state shifted towards the Democratic candidate on Tuesday (compared to 2004), leading him to a 26,000-vote margin of victory. 

Of all the red states won back by the Democrats on Tuesday, Indiana represented the steepest climb.  In 2004, George W. Bush had won the Hoosier State by over 510,000 votes -- a greater margin than in any of the other states turned blue by Obama this week:

So how did the Democrats knock off the Hoosier State? 

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- All day long, volunteers flooded into the Obama headquarters in Gary, coming from Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan.  By the time I arrived there in the late afternoon, staff were redirecting people to Portage County.

- The walls of the Gary headquarters were littered with precinct maps.  The office itself was jammed with about two dozen people, all of them hitting the phones.

- Polling places in the city weren't at all crowded, but residents expected lines to form as the 6 pm closing time approached.

- During the 5 o'clock hour, I visited two quiet polling places in Hammond and another in Munster.  All said they'd seen record turnout over the course of the day, the bulk of it in the morning.

- I asked one tired looking Obama volunteer, "Are you running on steam at this point?" Her response, "No, hope!"

Yesterday, John McCain made a brief pitstop in Indianapolis.  But today, after voting this morning in Chicago, Barack Obama headed across the border for one last appearance, his 49th stop in the Hoosier State since the campaign began:

"I think we can win Indiana, otherwise I wouldn't be in Indiana," Obama told a reporter at an Indianapolis union hall this morning. Indianapolis was his only campaign stop outside of Illinois today.

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In a last-minute attempt to shore up support in the Hoosier State, John McCain is going to make a pit-stop at the Indianapolis airport tomorrow:

Republican Sen. John McCain will make his first Indiana campaign stop in more than four months -- a rally at the Indianapolis airport Monday afternoon, the day before voters choose the nation's next president. [...]

Despite the unusual closeness of the race, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis told reporters in a conference call Friday morning that "we love the results of the campaign we have going on there."

He cited a poll by Rasmussen, released this week, that showed McCain with a 3 percentage-point lead, a statistical dead heat given the poll's margin of error.

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Today, the Indiana Court of Appeals put the final nail in the coffin of the Republican efforts to obstruct early voting access in the Democratic-leaning cities of Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago.  The court upheld Superior Court Judge Diane Kavadias-Schneider's ruling that the opening of the early voting centers in these three areas violated state law. From the Indianapolis Star:

The court in an unanimous decision upheld a special judge's ruling last week that the satellite in-person absentee voting centers should remain open. The Democrat-controlled Lake County election board had authorized the centers, but Republicans protested.

The Court of Appeals rejected Republican arguments that state law required an unanimous decision by the election board to open the satellite centers.

So that's that.  Now, what's going on in Marion County?

As is the case nationwide, early voting has proven quite popular in Lake County, Indiana. Chicago Public Radio points out that lines at all four of the county's voting sites have lasted up to four hours. To compensate, the county election board has approved a plan to extend the early voting period an extra three days -- through his weekend until noon on Monday. A no-brainer, right? Not for the board's two sitting Republicans, both of whom voted against the extension, proving yet again that the Lake County GOP is primarily concerned about obstructing ballot access in the Democratic-leaning region of the county.

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Meet Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita. By now, you might know him as the Republican official who stood idly by while a legitimate voter suppression battle developed in Lake County. He then promised to conduct a criminal investigation into the suspicious voter registration forms submitted by ACORN in the same county, despite no evidence suggesting the organization itself purposefully committed fraud. While his election-season behavior is frustrating, it shouldn't be shocking.

As Talking Points Memo noted, in a 2002 South Bend Tribune article pulled from Nexus, Rokita spoke fondly of his experience preventing a recount in Florida during the 2000 election:

Working on his own time, [Rokita] also assisted George W. Bush's campaign during the infamous Florida election recount in 2000. Rokita is proud of that, especially because the U.S. Supreme Court cited Indiana election law when it decided the election in Bush's favor.

But here's the real doozy.

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When detailing the slime oozing from the McCain campaign last week, we highlighted the story of Ted Zoromski, a Middleton, WI resident who quit his job at a telemarketing firm when they asked him to read a script bashing Barack Obama. As it turns out, Zoromski isn't the only Midwesterner refusing to spew this nonsense. TPM's Greg Sargent has the details:

Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.

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The Post-Tribune's John Byrne is reporting that GOP lawyers in Lake County, IN have asked the state supreme court to overturn Superior Court Judge Diane Kavadias-Schneider's decision earlier this week to allow early voting centers to remain open in the towns of Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago:

The appeal asks the court to hold a hearing on the matter before the Nov. 4 general election, and to overturn an order by Lake Superior Court Judge Diane Kavadias Schneider to keep the locations open.

The state Supreme Court did not announce Thursday whether it would accept the case.

No big surprise here.  Yet it seems extremely unlikely that the state's high court is going to grant the Republicans' wish and discard the countless early votes already cast in these cities.

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Beyond the apparent resolution of the early voting dispute in Lake County, there have been quite a few other interesting tidbits out of Indiana this week.  Here are the latest developments from our neighborhing swing state:

First, Barack Obama is scheduled to hold a rally in Indianapolis tomorrow.  It will mark his 47th appearance in the state this election cycle.

Second, John McCain's campaign made its first television advertising buy in the state this week.  The spots showed up on Hoosier State airwaves today.

Third and finally, check out this Time.com video on the Democratic resurgence in Elkhart County, IN.