Inquirer editorial: Pa. court should block misleading ballot question

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has rightly agreed to hear a challenge to a dubious rewording of a rejected ballot question.

The question concerns whether the mandatory retirement age for judges should be raised from 70 to 75, which would extend the tenure of the high court's lone Republican, 69-year-old Thomas Saylor. Voters declined to do so in April. But GOP legislators had the result ruled moot and scheduled a revised question for November.

The edited version mentions only the proposed mandatory retirement age, not the existing one. It thereby suggests that voters are being asked to limit rather than extend judges' tenures.

The court should let the April results stand or at least retain the original wording of the question. The lawmakers have argued that their critics assume voters are "uneducated." But it's their deceptive tactics that reveal real contempt for the electorate.