OFFICIAL FOCUS SHOULD BE ON ST. LOUIS VOTING

What appear to be serious voting problems in St. Louis are finally getting attention from news media across the nation -- the kind of attention that is likely to pressure state and federal officials to take action that is long overdue.

By now, the litany of irregularities has become familiar.

On Election Day last November, Democratic operatives got a judge to keep polls open past the 7 p.m. deadline. An appellate judge reversed that decision, but only after many voters took advantage of the situation.

That was the finale to a whole day of voting glitches. Some voters claimed they were unable to vote because their voter registration had been nullified. Indeed, the St. Louis Election Board had culled thousands of names from its voter lists because those individuals hadn't voted in years and did not respond to a questionnaire earlier in the year.

U.S. Sen. Christopher Bond, who last week submitted to the U.S. attorney's office a detailed report compiled by some St. Louis lawyers, suspects that Democrats carefully staged its attempt to circumvent election laws and procedures. How else do you explain the fact that St. Louis voters started receiving recorded telephone messages from the Rev. Jesse Jackson at precisely the same time the Democrats were seeking a court order to keep the polls open?

Last week's report prompted a rather remarkable editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, saying the city "appears to have a full-blown election scandal."

The next day, The Wall Street Journal observed in its lead editorial, "Voter fraud isn't confined to St. Louis. ... But just now, all the elements of a good story await the national media in St. Louis: legal chicanery, colorful characters, angry voters, even the Rev. Jackson."

Matt Blunt, Missouri's new secretary of state, received considerable media attention a few weeks ago by holding hearings around the state. He produced a long list of recommendations regarding future elections.

Sadly, Blunt hasn't given appropriate attention to the serious problems in St. Louis, choosing instead to take a statewide blanket approach to elections in general. Blunt now promises to closely monitor next month's St. Louis primary.

But wait.

There's more.

A batch of some 3,000 new voter registrations were delivered to the St. Louis Election Board earlier this month just in time to beat the deadline for the St. Louis mayoral primary. All of them, it seems, were fraudulent.

Gov. Bob Holden and Secretary of State Blunt owe it to St. Louis voters to take speedy action. That's where the biggest election problem exists. That's where the focus ought to be.