A Post-Dispatch story about appalling steps taken by St. Louis elections director Scotty Leiendecker [1] to disenfranchise newly registered voters raises important questions about his practices for filling temporary election jobs. Particularly disturbing is Leiendecker's hiring of accused thief Josephine Perkins almost immediately after she lodged registration fraud charges against her former employer, ACORN.

ACORN fired Josephine Perkins this month after a co-worker accused her of swiping a purse at the organization's office, 4304 Manchester Avenue. ...

In a twist, Perkins was hired days later as a temporary worker by the city's Republican elections director, Scott Leiendecker, an outspoken ACORN critic.

Did Leiendecker induce Perkins to make baseless claims against a political nemesis by promising her employment with the city elections board in return for making fraud allegations against the employer that just fired her?

This sort of ploy would be far from surprising coming from Leiendecker [2], whose short tenure at the St. Louis election board has been characterized by vigorous attempts to suppress city voting and embed advantages for GOP candidates within the electoral system. Leiendecker, a Republican, came to the election board directly from the staff of a GOP special election candidate.

Leiendecker should immediately come clean about any communications he had with Josephine Perkins prior to her hiring, and should release any documents or records of conversations between the election board and Perkins regarding her charges against ACORN and her subsequent hiring.

Jobs at the St. Louis election board do not exist to be bartered away by Scotty Leiendecker in a quid pro quo designed to accrue advantage to the GOP. It's time the referees were called upon to stop trying to swing the game.

*Update: Added word "not" to first sentence in final graf.  Mistakenly wrote "do exist" in the initial post.