Another Cole County Circuit Judge, Tom Brown, has decided that a term-limits proposal that Secretary of State Bekki Cook had ruled off the November ballot qualifies to appear there. Cook had earlier disqualified the proposal, claiming fraud in collection of the signatures. Judge Brown ruled after both opponents and proponents agreed that the qualifying number of valid signatures had indeed been achieved.

The proposal would amend the Missouri Constitution to require election ballots to state whether candidates for Congress support a term-limit amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The statement "disregarded voters' instructions on term limits" would go next to incumbents' names if they vote against sending the amendment to the states for ratification.

This space has consistently supported term limits and doesn't change that position now. With this particular proposal, however, the thought occurs that there is such a thing as getting too cute by half. Fiscal notes such as the one discussed above are one thing. Language such as this is quite another. The proposed amendment should be defeated for going too far toward mischief.

All this is aside from the larger issue here: Secretary of State Cook has yet another embarrassing miscue for which to answer. One week she announces that alleged fraud will keep this measure off the ballot, and the next week she changes her mind and agrees with opponents, proponents and a judge that she was wrong. Missourians are left wondering what is going on in the secretary of state's office, whose chief duties center on the smooth conduct of elections and decisions on which proposals qualify for the ballot and which don't.