VALPARAISO | At least 6,000 extra Democratic ballots were printed today in Porter County by the Voters Registration office.

Patrick Lyp, the Republican representative to the Voter Registration Board, said the office started receiving calls between noon and 1 p.m. that precincts were running short of ballots.

Voters from across the county called The Times to report delays at the polls and that polls had run out of Democratic ballots.

The county has a special machine to print extra ballots as needed, which were then delivered to the polling places throughout the county.

The county had originally ordered ballots in February before officials realized how many people would be voting in the primary election.

Lyp said, however, that the office ran out of the correct size paper and had to use a different size for about 100 ballots, which cannot be read by the county's machines. Those ballots will have to be counted by hand on Wednesday.

"While not a final count tonight, it will be exceedingly close," Lyp said.