What should have been a proud moment for the House of Representatives became one of its most shameful when the Republican leadership subverted a good election bill with an amendment intended to destroy Florida's successful and popular public finance campaign system.

By coincidence or not, the amendment would also magnify Gov. Jeb Bush's incumbency advantage next year.

It would set a $6-million limit on grants from the public campaign trust fund, require candidates who take public money -- but not others -- to forgo contributions from political action committees and disallow out-of-state contributions, even from friends and relatives, from helping a candidate earn matching funds.

The $6-million would have been adequate in 1998 but not in 1994, when public financing helped Gov. Lawton Chiles narrowly defeat Bush. The Republican challenger turned down public financing so that he could exploit the Bush dynasty's nationwide fundraising prowess, as he did again four years later.

The strings on PACs and out-of-state money might be reasonable as part of a sincere, fairly balanced effort to clean up campaign finance, but that's hardly what this is.

As the matching funds would be first-come-first-served, with priority for the primaries, no candidate could count on any remaining for the general election. Advantage: Bush. The governor's challengers would have to choose between public finance or PAC money. Advantage: Bush.

However, it's not just Democrats who would be hurt. Many Republican candidates for governor and Cabinet have participated. Bob Milligan, who has done a superb job as comptroller, credits public financing for his defeat of a powerful Democratic incumbent in 1994.

Republicans who oppose it pretend that the public dislikes it, too, but that's a falsehood and they know it. When the Constitution Revision Commission proposed to write the public finance principle into the Constitution in 1998, 64 percent of the voters agreed. It carried in all but 14 of the smallest counties. It was popular even in such Republican strongholds as Collier, Duval and Pinellas. Voters in the district of House Speaker Pro Tem Sandra Murman, R-Tampa, favored it 16,685 to 9,386. The count in Majority Leader Mike Fasano's Pasco district was 21,396 yes, 12,007 no. Nonetheless, both voted Thursday to destroy public finance. Voters? What voters?

The ruinous amendment was added to a "must-pass" bill that revises Florida's voting and recount procedures in light of the presidential debacle last year. This was an abuse of process as well as of power. The elections committee hadn't even discussed public finance before approving a clean bill. Its chairman, Dudley Goodlette, R-Naples, sprang the surprise amendment at a meeting of the House Procedural and Redistricting Council, which isn't supposed to consider substantive changes. That's how the bill will go to the floor, where Democrats probably haven't a prayer of repairing the damage.

Once again Florida must look to the Senate for fairness. Its Republican leaders don't care much for public financing, either, but they have shown a much greater respect for process than the ruthless rulers of the House. They need to show it at least one more time.

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