Maine’s Nov. 7 ballot contains six referendum and constitutional amendment questions. Five are first-rate examples of ballot questions at their best — from gay rights to physician-assisted suicide to tax reform to preserve the state’s working waterfront, they cover the type of vitally important issues that should be decided by the public and about which people of good conscience can reasonably disagree.

The sixth (Question 3, actually) is an example of a different sort. From the misleading wording of the question itself to the empty promise the accompanying legislation makes, An Act to Allow Video Lottery Terminals is the citizen-initiated referendum gone wrong. People of good conscience should be repulsed.

This stinker got on the ballot because last summer more than 42,000 Maine citizens signed a petition asking, “Do you want to allow video lottery machines at certain horse racing tracks if 40 percent of the profits are used for property tax relief?” What that 42,000-plus did not know, unless they bothered to read the 15-page bill behind it, is that certain tracks is actually one specific track and the relief merely preserves the status quo.

That specific track is Scarborough Downs. The legislation this referendum would enact permits video lottery terminals — a nice name for slot machines — only at harness-racing tracks that host 100 or more races each year and only Scarborough Downs meets that requirement. Bangor Raceway, Maine’s only other commercial track, is a distant and fading second at 26.

Even if Bangor could up its race days four-fold, it won’t get the slots. The legislation also prohibits two video lottery establishments within a 150-mile radius. Bangor, by sheer coincidence no doubt, is 137 miles from Scarborough. With public interest in racing in steep decline, it would take a miracle by the state Harness Racing Commission to so dramatically increase race days at Bangor. Expanding the distance from Scarborough to Bangor by 13 miles would take a miracle from an even higher source.

Let’s talk money. That 40 percent for property tax relief is projected to amount to some $43 million a year. The law requires the machines pay back at least 75 percent of what they are fed; Scarborough Downs says it will be more like 92 percent. At that higher, almost charitable level, the machines will gobble nearly $117 million a year. Scarborough Downs keeps 5 percent to boost its purses, 3 percent goes to other racing venues (Bangor and numerous agricultural fairs), 3 percent goes to the state police to keep everything on the level. What’s left — nearly half, close to $60 million — goes to the owner of the machines and the owner of the track.

Still, $43 million for property tax relief sounds enticing. It was meant to. One small problem: The money will go directly into the Local Government Fund, commonly called municipal revenue sharing, which is capped by law at 5.1 percent of general fund revenue. The money will, at best, merely offset the General Fund loss from legislative cuts in broad-based taxes with a narrow 40-percent tax on the most gullible people who find their way to Scarborough.

In the real world, “relief” generally is taken to mean an improvement over the existing condition. In the world of Question 3, “relief” has all the meaning of “certain tracks.”