Voters upset by the runaway actions of the General Assembly will have a chance to apply the legal brakes Tuesday. They’ll get to narrow the field of candidates up for election to a crucial seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court, which should be a check to a legislature fond of passing laws of questionable legality.

Four candidates are on the ballot. The two who receive the most votes will face off in November’s general election. This is a low-profile election further obscured by the legislature’s abuse of the electoral process. Lawmakers passed and Gov. Pat McCrory signed a law that would have changed state Supreme Court elections to “retention votes.” An incumbent justice would gain a new term by receiving more that 50 percent of the votes in a simple yes/no election without opponents.

This was a neat trick since the only justice up for re-election was Associate Justice Robert Edmunds, a Republican. Should he have lost a retention vote, his replacement would have been named by McCrory, a Republican. Thus, for Republicans, it was heads we win, tails we win.

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