One of the goofier features of Pennsylvania election law is the way lieutenant governors are selected.

In the primary election, candidates for lieutenant governor run independent of the candidates for governor. But after voters in the two major political parties pick their candidate, the winners run on a combined ticket with the gubernatorial nominees.

This can make for strange political bedfellows. The most recent example was when the late Catherine Baker Knoll of McKees Rocks wound up on a ticket with Gov. Ed Rendell and it was clear she was not his first choice for a running mate. With the wealth of candidates in the May 18 primary -- three Democrats and nine Republicans -- the resulting pairings could be even more improbable.

Another oddity is that the race for second place attracts so many candidates. On the Democratic side this year are former Philadelphia controller Jonathan Saidel, Centre County legislator Scott Conklin and Commonwealth Court Judge Doris Smith-Ribner. The Republican side of the ballot is three times as long, with the most well-known among them Russ Diamond, a Lebanon County businessman who was an organizer of the Clean Sweep campaign that targeted legislative incumbents in 2006, and Butler County legislator Daryl Metcalfe, a member of the state House since 1998.

We wonder what impact a controversial firebrand like Mr. Metcalfe in the second position on a GOP ballot would mean for the gubernatorial campaign of state Attorney General Tom Corbett or his more conservative rival, state Rep. Sam Rohrer.

This is no way to select an administration to lead the state. The governor and lieutenant governor should have complementary philosophies and plans for the future, and they should be a team. The process of selecting the president and vice president of the United States is a better model: Candidates for the vice presidency are chosen by the presidential nominees selected by voters in the primary.

That's a system Pennsylvania should adopt for choosing its own second-in-command.

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