HAVE YOU DONE YOUR ELECTION DAY HOMEWORK?

KENNETT, Mo. -- Ready to vote Nov. 7? The polls show most of us have already made up our minds about Al Gore and George Bush. According to those polls, the undecided vote at no more than 6 percent of expected general election voters. And that's good, because it would indicate a majority of us have paid some attention to a campaign that will hardly be remembered as intellectually stimulating or constitutionally significant.

Now that you've pretty well decided which of the candidates you want to be the next president, how do you feel about the candidates running for U.S. senator or governor or state representative or secretary of state? Chances are you know a good deal less about the men wanting to be the attorney general of Missouri than you know about George or Al. That's understandable, except as the chief legal officer of the state and our representative in courts as important as the U.S. Supreme Court, the attorney general has a great deal of power over your life and safety and, oftentimes, your pocketbook.

Conversely, some of the public's least regarded offices, whether at the county or state level, provide far more influence over the average citizen's life than many of the more high-sounding positions such as lieutenant governor and state treasurer. Believe me when I say your state representative is far more important to your well-being than a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and even the U.S. Senate.

Chances are if you don't know much about the candidates for state representative, some of whom probably live in your city, then you don't have much knowledge about candidates for other offices. Oh, hopefully you know the names of some of the incumbent officeholders, and maybe you can choose the incumbent from the list of candidates on the ballot you'll see November 7. Beyond that, many are hard-pressed to give any details other than the information one gathers by observing them, none of which has anything to do with how they view important issues.

I don't want to take this too far, but the most important decisions voters will have to make in the general election involve neither candidates for federal or state offices but the constitutional and statutory proposals on the ballot. There are five such propositions, three of them amendments and two are statutory and are being submitted as a result of initiative petitions.

In a word, these five questions are mammoth in size. Just publishing their texts in a newspaper requires three full pages of small, difficult-to-read type, 18 full columns of itty-bitty printing that challenge even the keenest eyesights. It is safe to say most voters, say 90 percent, won't read all of the 378 inches of amendment text. Virtually all will rely on a brief summary that will appear above each of the propositions, yet as carefully worded as these summaries are, they will hardly convey all of the details that may or may not become a permanent part of Missouri's constitution and statutes.

To illustrate the complex, even arcane, nature of these proposals, voters should know that opponents of one of the propositions have even manufactured non-existent "facts" for their arguments, confident the public will not know the difference because of the ambiguity created by the language and its mind-boggling length. Still another amendment may sound familiar to some voters who, upon reading the summary, will believe they have already voted for a similar proposition in a past election. As a matter of fact, they have voted on two earlier amendments, approving them both times. The reason for yet another amendment is that politicians figured out ways to circumvent the earlier ballot issues, requiring a third stab at reform. Another proposition attempts to deal with a subject that polls indicate is the cause of most of the public's angst toward constitutional government and campaigns, yet it is being opposed by powerful groups because it runs contrary to their philosophical and/or electoral interests.

The situation becomes even more out-of-bounds, with one of the amendments dealing with a minor point in establishing eligibility of new members of civic and church organizations sponsoring bingo games. Since amendments to our outdated state constitution are required for such legalistic nonsense, we waste tax revenue to make minor shifts in state policies and rules to get around the antiquity of the present charter.

Because Missouri's present constitution is ancient -- more than half-century since it was approved and is far too long -- the second longest state charter in the U.S. -- and because it is too restrictive in some areas and too lax in others, Missourians are wasting millions of dollars trying to keep the charter relevant and workable. At the same time they are denying themselves the innovations that would make state government more responsive to citizens' needs.

We are literally amending the present charter to death through irrelevance, while the vast majority of issues seek to cope with the demands of constant and needed changes in minute portions of the document. Much of the distrust by the poorly informed citizenry so pervasive in Missouri's first constitution remains in the document approved back in 1945. That year also saw the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War. Americans only got their news from newspapers and the radio. The typical sticker price of most cars was $500. And families lived in new homes that averaged $12,000 to build.

Voters won't have a chance to call for a modern, more responsive, more democratic charter for two years. In the meantime, citizens can only struggle on November 7 to correct a document that reflected their state more than 180 years ago.

~Jack Stapleton is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.