On Tuesday evening, while you were most likely watching TV, I was on the other side of the screen.

Along with Valparaiso University political science professor Jennifer Hora, I appeared on Lakeshore News Tonight's special election broadcasts as a political analyst on this historic night.

If you were tuned in to Lakeshore Public Television that night, it's a safe bet you were doing so because you wanted to see the results from local races. Good for you!

But not everyone cared about the outcome of those local races.

It was disturbing to discover that about 15,000 voters in Lake County apparently cast ballots only in the presidential race.

I have to give Barack Obama's campaign credit for being so successful in getting out the vote. But couldn't those voters have shown more interest in other races as well?

These local officials affect the lives of everyone in the region in very direct ways. People should care a lot about who's making those decisions and what they're deciding.

Obama was elected as an agent of change. He successfully convinced the voters that voting for John McCain was like voting President Bush in for a third term.

So why weren't those people who were sold on change in the White House more eager for change at the local level?

Specifically, why did Portage Township voters and Lake County voters in five townships keep their township assessor instead of streamlining government?

In North Township and Porter County's Center Township, voters saw the wisdom of eliminating that position, just as the Indiana General Assembly did with smaller townships earlier this year.

MySmartGov.org, which heavily promoted the campaign to eliminate the 43 township assessors, had good results except in Northwest Indiana and a few other urban areas. Lake County is the glaring exception.

And in Porter County, the forces of change got clobbered by anti-South Shore sentiment. The candidates who see transportation improvements as a way to improve the quality of life in the county were sharply rebuked.

There's even talk now about seceding from the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority. That's scary. Haven't they noticed that the first big Marquette Plan project, partially funded by the RDA, was the new park in Portage?

How could the voters be so committed to change at the national level but so reticent at the local level?

How would those 15,000 voters who took a pass on the local races in Lake County have affected the outcome of the township assessor questions in those six townships?

We'll never know.

One of the odd things about elections is that no matter how many times you look at the results, some of the voters' decisions are just plain baffling. Do they want change, or don't they?

Even this guy who comments on election results on TV and writes about them for the newspaper and the Web has to admit being stumped.