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When our children were little, they’d bring a bag, like it was Halloween, to collect the candy tossed from the high school students and adults on the floats. More recently, it was my teenagers tossing the candy to the next generation.

Last year, I had one of those “get off my lawn� moments. I blame the candy.

The younger children seemed to be inching closer and closer to the floats, which are pulled by big trucks. My old-man angst, driven by high blood pressure, rose to a fevered pitch as I kept imagining disaster — hordes of children nearly diving under vehicles to get their hands on a Jolly Rancher.

As the children were lured by the candy and the commotion built, with younger parents drinking beverages out of oversized Stanley cups, I told my wife I had to pick up my chair and move away. I couldn’t watch the impending disaster. I was the Grinch and Ebenezer Scrooge rolled into one cranky old man.

I was reminded of the story recently because of the new catch phrase in Missouri politics: ballot candy.

The two-word concoction captures how some Republicans are trying to add irrelevant elements to a ballot initiative. The goal is to lure voters into thinking the initiative is a good idea. This particular initiative, ironically, would make it harder for voters to change the state constitution through the initiative process.

For a couple of years now, several Republican senators and representatives in the Missouri Legislature have proposed resolutions to make it harder for citizens to pass ballot initiatives. The proposals would either require a super majority for an initiative to pass, or require passage in every congressional district to dilute the power of votes in more populous places like St. Louis and Kansas City.

Part of the fear is that an initiative to add abortion protections in the state constitution — supporters are seeking signatures to place it on the fall ballot — might pass, as similar measures have in other states.

This year, it’s state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican from Arnold, who is standing atop the legislative float, tossing candy at voters and trying desperately to get their attention. Among the items Coleman wants to add to her potential ballot initiative (which, again, would actually make it harder to pass such initiatives) is one that would say noncitizens can’t vote in Missouri.

That sounds great, particularly to folks whose chosen presidential candidate refers to some undocumented immigrants as “animals.� But that’s already established law in Missouri. The “candy� is meant to get voters to say yes to something without realizing they’re actually diluting the power of their own votes.

The phrase “ballot candy� appears to have been first used, according to Post-Dispatch archives, by former state Sen. Robert Johnson, a Lee’s Summit Republican. Last year, as a similar resolution was being debated, Johnson lamented the dishonesty.

“This is what entices a person to go in, and the first thing they see is, ‘Non-citizens are voting? What?’� Johnson said. “I can’t be for that. So, yes, it’s ballot candy. It’s a sweetener. It’s not relevant.�

Johnson’s opinion is significant. He served in the Missouri Senate the last time a group of lawmakers in power — then it was Democrats — tried to make it harder for citizens to pass ballot initiatives. In 1991, following the passage of the Hancock Amendment, which limits legislative spending, the Legislature tried to place a similar initiative on the ballot as the one Coleman is pitching this year.

Gov. John Ashcroft, a Republican who is the father of current Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, the measure.

“It is through the initiative process that those who have no influence with elective representatives may take their cause directly to the people,� John Ashcroft said of the initiative process. “The General Assembly should be reluctant, therefore, to enact legislation which places any impediments on the initiative power which are inconsistent with the reservation found in the Constitution.�

He was right. Trying to make it harder for Missouri residents to practice democracy should leave nothing but a sour taste in voters’ mouths.

The Democrats (and some Republicans) who are standing against Coleman’s attempt to water down the citizen initiative process are echoing Ashcroft’s words from a generation ago. They should stand in the middle of the street to block her legislative parade and tell her to put the ballot candy — and the initiative it’s trying to sweeten — back in her bag of tricks.