The normal tactic of elected officials when they are pulling off something sneaky or scummy is to do it and then go home, and to make it a point to do it as far in advance of the next elections as possible. In taking that approach, they are gambling that the voters will either get over or forget about what they did before the time comes around again when they can decide to let them stay in office or get rid of them.

That is exactly the approach that Pennsylvania legislators took the night of July 7 when they voted themselves an enormous special raise -- 16 percent -- on top of the regular, annual raise that they get automatically every year. The House voted on it about 1 a.m. and the Senate at 2 a.m. and then they left Harrisburg in their state-supplied cars for home, or maybe for the beach.

The elections in question are not until next year, nearly a year off for the primaries and a year and a half for the general elections.

But this time it might not work. One courageous soul, businessman Russ Diamond of Annville, 20 miles from Harrisburg, the scene of the crime, has launched an effort called Operation Clean Sweep to get rid of all 228 of the legislators who come up for reelection in 2006. He has opened a Web site for enraged voters, www.pacleansweep.com, to serve as a focal point for those who wish to join him in his cleansing effort.

Mr. Diamond's motives might not be entirely pure, given that he himself has been a candidate in the past, but it is clear that he is attempting to translate into action the feelings of many concerned voters.

While the Post-Gazette itself cannot commit to rejecting any candidate at this early stage, we are sympathetic to Mr. Diamond's effort and agree entirely that what the commonwealth's legislators did July 7 was disgusting. Their salaries are now second in the nation, only behind those of the legislators of California, a state with the world's sixth largest economy. Pennsylvania also has more legislators than any state other than New Hampshire, which pays its solons $200 a day for only a few days a year.

We would make only one small suggestion to modify Mr. Diamond's reform effort. We believe that his group should target for defeat only those legislators who voted for the pay raise, not all 228 of those up for re-election in 2006. We believe that non-incumbent candidates for all seats should be asked to pledge in writing that their first act upon assuming office would be to repeal the July 7 after-midnight raid on the cookie jar.

Gov. Rendell and whoever opposes him on the Republican side should also be firmly pledged in advance to sign an immediate reversal of the greedy move.

A longer-term project should be to get the size of the Pennsylvania Legislature under control. This commonwealth does not need 253 highly-paid legislators with large staffs and every perquisite known to mankind. It is the attention that voters and taxpayers pay to this issue between now and next year's elections that will determine whether this scandal continues, or is brought to a sharp, sudden end with the 2006 elections.