Fear of a better N.Y.

Halloween is coming. Want to hear something really scary? Terrible goblins are coming to despoil New York’s Adirondack Mountains. Bloodthirsty werewolves, to rip workers’ pensions from their rightful owners. Ghosts, to haunt the reproductive rights of women. Witches, to curse a state that once protected immigrants.

That’s the spooky story foes of a constitutional convention would have voters across New York State believe as Election Day approaches, and it is no more believable than a bad zombie movie.

Every 20 years, as prescribed in the state Constitution, the people of New York have a crack at opting for what amounts to a special session of specially elected representatives to propose revisions to the state’s foundational legal document.

It’s a critical opportunity for citizens to fix a government that’s broken and that, by definition, the elected legislators who are part of it cannot repair.

This year — when memories of epidemic corruption are fresh and the case for a convention is stronger than at any time in memory — the vested interests are out in force spinning tales of doom and gloom.

Their baseless scare campaign claims that big, bad forces with billions of dollars and names like Koch and Mercer are behind a conspiracy to crack open the Constitution and do their worst, turning New York into, say, Arkansas.

But there’s simply no conspiracy; ballot consideration of a convention is required, by the Constitution itself, every 20 years. The supposed flood of dark money is all in their imaginations.

In fact, the money and energy in the fight so far emanate from existing interest groups trying to protect the hands that feed them.

The contradictory coalition is so broad it contains Planned Parenthood and the New York State Right To Life. The leadership of the state GOP and Democrats walk in lockstep. So too, the Conservative Party and the Working Families Party, and the AFL-CIO, fighting for labor rights for farmworkers, and the Farm Bureau opposing that cause.

The in-unison fearmongering proves that the vested interests who built and benefit from the very bad way our government now runs want to keep it that way.

The evidence is overwhelming that the state Constitution, a 52,500 word mishmash, needs edits. (The U.S. Constitution has but 7,591 words, including the 27 amendments.)

This is a state in which the law allows corrosive contributions to candidates of $65,000 — more than tenfold the limit for presidential candidates.

In which assemblymembers and senators can hold second jobs, putting them on the hook to private concerns as they supposedly serve the public.

In which the power legislators wield is such an open invitation to corruption that more of them get arrested than lose elections, including the bosses of both the Republican-controlled Senate and the Democrat-led Assembly.

In which partisan gerrymandering and other perks of office allow incumbents to choose their voters, not the other way around.

We’ll detail more problems, and urgent fixes, between now and Election Day.

While there’s no guarantee a convention would produce sterling reform proposals — voters would next year elect three delegates in all 63 Senate districts, and 15 statewide, at-large delegates — there’s a damn good chance it would, so furious are the people at their government.

Last year, 89% of New Yorkers said corruption in this state is a serious problem.

And on the off chance that an atrocious proposal or two emanated from a convention, the voters would have the final say in 2019 to turn it down.

Or maybe it’s the people of New York who the fearmongers fighting the convention are really afraid of.