Then there was 1994 and questions were raised about Election Board connections to riverboat gambling before a vote. There was another purge.

In 1997, the governor moved again to restore order.

By 2000, the Justice Department was back, suing the city’s Election Board for widespread problems in St. Louis during the presidential election. Nixon was the state attorney general at the time, and his top aide was Burlison, who found himself on the opposite side of where he is today, defending the state against such outside intrusion.

In 2001, after FBI subpoenas, Gov. Bob Holden made changes. One of his top aides was Jane Dueker, the lawyer now representing the Hubbards in the latest Election Board tiff.

Three years later, state Auditor Claire McCaskill (now a U.S. senator) called for the Election Board law to be changed, suggesting local control would be better than the long-standing tradition of the governor making political appointments to the troubled board.

That was the basis of my question to Nixon on Tuesday. I asked if the problem wasn’t the commissioners, nor the current political family gone awry, but a broken system.

“I don’t think so,” Nixon said.