LOCAL OFFICIALS HAVE long been able to manipulate election results by deciding precisely when to hold referendums. But as the state Supreme Court noted recently, manipulating who votes isn't the only mischief officials engage in; they sometimes use the powers of their offices to try to slant how their chosen voters vote.

In the case at hand, the high court struck down a half-percent sales tax that was supposed to fund a local bus system because of the way the question was worded and the way explanations were handed out.

In a unanimous opinion, the high court said Charleston County violated state law by putting a question on the ballot that was clearly biased toward the answer officials were seeking. This wasn't a close call: The question had a special heading, "Traffic Congestion relief, safe roads and clean water for Charleston." A three-paragraph description of how the county would use the $1.3 billion the tax would collect over 25 years was followed by these instructions: "All qualified electors desiring to vote in favor of the traffic congestion relief, safe roads, and clean water sales tax for the stated purposes shall vote 'YES.' All qualified electors opposed to the traffic congestion relief, safe roads, and clean water sales tax for the stated purposes shall vote 'NO.'‘"

Most politicians would be embarrassed to admit even to putting such slanted wording on a public opinion poll and trying to claim that the results bore any relationship to the public's actual opinion on the topic.

We would hope that most elected officials wouldn't even consider putting such language on a ballot. But this wasn't something that slipped by: The county election commission had tried to convince the county council to switch to neutral wording; the council initially agreed, then changed its mind.

The lesson here is straightforward, even if seeing that it is followed may not be: Officials must take care to keep their opinions to themselves when they write the words that go on the ballot.

A related issue involving explanations of ballot questions is more easily addressed.

State law requires a special state commission to write easy-to-understand explanations of proposals to amend the state constitution, and allows election officials to make those available to voters waiting in line. That can help speed up the process.

But while state law allows plain-English explanations of local referendums to be printed on the ballot, it doesn't allow those explanations to be passed out in the polling place. Some local governments do it anyway, although apparently they don't always stick to the same explanations as they use on the ballots.

Critics contended that Charleston County officials used even more biased language for these legally suspect off-ballot explanations than for the one on the ballot itself. The high court didn't rule on that issue, having already thrown out the results on other grounds. But it noted that providing any type of explanation in the polling place -- and particularly biased explanations -- probably violated the law, and it suggested the Legislature consider establishing some guidelines.

That's good advice, which the Legislature would do well to follow. We can't imagine why the off-ballot explanations should be any different from those printed on the ballots, but we can clearly see the need for making them available to voters while they're waiting in line. It's a simple question of efficiency. And it wouldn't hurt if a law allowing that also served to remind local officials, yet again, that they mustn't toy around with the ballot in order to manipulate the election results.