Talk in political circles is that Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green could get overturned on one of the most closely watched decisions of this political year. This might happen, but it should not.

Judge Green was asked to decide whether a ballot proposal known as Clean Missouri should go to a statewide vote in the Nov. 6 general election. He ruled against that Friday in a decision that now will be reviewed by a state appeals court.

It’s disappointing, on the way to finding a new court to hear their pleadings, that supporters of Clean Missouri have impugned the judge with the claim he “sided with lobbyists and special interests who are desperate to keep Amendment 1 off the ballot.”

We say this because we are among those interested citizens who have been troubled by this ballot issue for the same reason Judge Green cites in his opinion: it lumps unrelated issues into one proposal.

Green wrote: “The twenty or so substantive changes outlined in the petition relate to at least two different and extremely broad purposes: (One), the organization of the General Assembly, and (two), ethics or campaign finance regulation aimed at avoiding misconduct by public officials …”

Clean Missouri was proposed through an initiative petition. Its key provisions include limiting lobbyist gifts to lawmakers to $5, a slight lowering of campaign contribution limits for legislative candidates, a ban on raising campaign funds on state property, changes to the waiting period for ex-lawmakers to become lobbyists, and making lawmakers subject to the state open-records law.

Another — quite different — provision would replace the current system for drawing state legislative districts with a process The Associated Press explains this way:

The new model would be “designed to have the number of seats won by each party reflect the parties’ share of the statewide vote in previous elections for president, governor and U.S. senator, where Democrats typically run closer to Republicans. Criteria such as compact and contiguous districts that keep communities together would carry a lower priority.”

We don’t doubt the good intentions of the thousands of people who signed the petitions to bring this multipart proposal to vote. After all, its focus on ethics reforms has been widely touted.

However, we will suggest a large number of these signers did not understand the legislative redistricting formula being proposed, and if they understood it now, many would not favor it.

The argument for overturning Judge Green is that voters should first decide Clean Missouri at the ballot box, and then the constitutional questions can be settled. That makes no sense when the flaw in this proposal is so obvious.

Voters in the general election should not be asked to vote “yes” or “no” on a single proposal that deals with both ethics and redistricting. These deserve separate votes — on the off chance the electorate favors tighter ethics rules but is not interested in such a dramatic change in how the General Assembly is chosen.