Bill Bradbury’s mano-a-mano with Ralph Nader notwithstanding, ballot battles aren’t all high drama affairs involving presidential aspirations, legal battles and last-minute appeals to the state Supreme Court. For a little comic relief, consider the anti-fluoride battle now being waged in Fluorence, uh, Florence.

A group of anti-fluoride fanatics led by a newly minted graduate of Lane Community College has been trying to qualify a measure for the ballot next spring that would effectively banish the substance from the city’s water supply. Florence has supplemented its water with fluoride for more than five decades, according to The Register-Guard of Eugene. But that needs to stop, chief petitioner Michael Hendrick told the paper, because ”there are so many difficulties when you mass-medicate people through our water system.” The prospect of even bathing in fluoridated water, he confessed, is ”a little frightening.”

To get the measure on the ballot, Hendrick and co. need to cobble together 343 signatures. They’ve gathered about 200, but the effort may be for naught. You see, Hendrick recently pulled up stakes and moved to a fluoride-free town where he can drink and bathe in safety. If he doesn’t live in Florence, it seems, he can’t sponsor an initiative in the city.

We have no doubt that a determined group like this one will find a way to qualify their initiative for the ballot. Even if they have to start all over again, how hard can it really be to collect 343 signatures? What we really wonder is why those who support – or ought to support – fluoridation can’t be bothered to demonstrate a fraction of the passion characteristic of fluoridation Luddites.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called fluoridation one of 10 great public health achievements of the last century. United States Surgeon General Richard Carmona, meanwhile, has called fluoridation ”the single most effective public health measure to prevent tooth decay and improve oral health over a lifetime, for both children and adults.”

This is high praise from prominent places. Nevertheless, many places still refuse to fluoridate their water. Bend’s city code, for instance, expressly prohibits fluoridation. We owe that to the success of a decades-old campaign much like the one now occurring in Florence.

That piece of the city code, which prohibits the use of a safe, time-tested technique to reduce tooth decay, ought to be an embarrassment to Bend. It ought to spark passion among public health proponents. If a small group of people in Florence can convince voters to do the wrong thing, then presumably a larger group of more sensible people in Bend can convince them to do the right thing. City council should consider getting the ball rolling.