State officials should stop hyping their system for welfare benefits and pay attention to independent data that support what advocates for the poor have being saying for months:

The new system too often fails. People who need and qualify for benefits aren’t getting them the way they should.

More than 12 percent of food stamp applications for the fiscal year ending September 2008 were improperly denied, according to USDA data posted by the National Association for Program Information and Performance Measurement. That translates to about 75,000 people, as Angela Mapes Turner’s Sunday story explained.

The report – coupled with other evidence of untimely, late approvals and numerous anecdotal stories – should prompt officials of Gov. Mitch Daniels’ administration to stop denying that the $1 billion contract to privatize the system for determining welfare eligibility has significant problems. Unfortunately, state officials continue to diminish the criticism and tout what they see as improvements.

State officials have heard numerous accounts of applicants’ supporting material being lost and citizens being told to wait for phone calls that never came. Fortunately, the gradual rollout of the computer-centered program has been frozen while state officials look at the issues – even while spinning them to downplay the problems.

Indiana’s error rate, the federal food stamp data show, is among the worst five states and is twice that of the previous years. Yet state officials continue to make excuses.

Criticism of the Republican administration’s welfare eligibility program is bipartisan. Unfortunately, a bill championed by state Sen. Vaneta Becker – a Republican – to return human caseworkers to the system was shot down in the Indiana Senate.

When Daniels was running for governor in 2004, he examined the statistics of his Democratic predecessors to criticize their performance and demand better. He has delivered in many areas. But the supposed modernization of welfare eligibility has too often been the mechanism that wrongly denies benefits to worthy applicants.

Candidate Daniels would have found the 12 percent error rate appalling. Gov. Daniels should do the same.