TERM-LIMIT BRANDING IS STRUCK DOWN

A federal judge in Kansas City last month struck down the most recent voter-approved issue relating to term limits as unconstitutional. In 1996, Missouri voters had approved, by a 58 percent margin, a constitutional amendment that required congressional candidates to state their views on term limits. The voided measure also would have identified term limits opponents by special ballot language placed next to their names on election ballots. Candidates who didn't toe the line would have the words "Disregarded voters' instructions on term limits" placed next to their names on the ballot. This is known in the political trade as "branding" language.

This newspaper has consistently supported term limits in recent years, believing them to be an important reform moving us away from an entrenched political class and toward the citizen-legislator concept our Founders envisioned. We nonetheless opposed this constitutional change as one that went too far. U.S. District Judge Brook Bartlett agreed, ruling that the amendment violates free speech, illegally imposes additional qualifications on candidates and wrongly shifts legislative powers from Congress and state lawmakers to citizens.

Judge Bartlett is corect. Similar rulings are expected in the nine other states that have passed identical measures in the last two years. No such gimmickry can take the place of citizens' doing the hard work and the heavy lifting of persuading their fellow citizens to adopt term limits on members of Congress across the country, as Missourians have done on our state lawmakers.