To vote or not to vote

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a decision by Nevada's high court striking down a state law governing when public officials must recuse themselves from voting.

Several states have joined Nevada in asking the Supreme Court to review the decision, arguing that free-speech rights do not extend to allowing a public official to ignore a conflict of interest in his official actions.

In 2006, Sparks City Councilman Michael A. Carrigan disclosed that his former campaign manager was also a consultant with a business seeking to develop a hotel-casino in Sparks. Mr. Carrigan later voted to approve the casino.

The Nevada Commission on Ethics ruled the vote improper and censured Mr. Carrigan, who appealed the ruling.

The Nevada Supreme Court reversed, arguing Nevada's ethics laws were over-broad and impinged on Mr. Carrigan's right to vote on public matters, which the court characterized as an exercise of the right to free speech.

Caren Jenkins, executive director of Ethics Commission, says a clarifying decision by the U.S. Supreme Court should provide the states with definitive guidelines for the ethical conduct of elected officials.

In fact, let's hope a national ruling will de-fang those who take the power to make such determinations on themselves.

It's already illegal for office-holders to accept bribes for their votes, and rightly so. Crooked politicians have been imprisoned for real and provable conflicts of interest, right here in Nevada. Nor is this ancient history.

But as for those gray areas in which an office-holder is expected to disclose a potential conflict and then decide whether he can divorce from self-interest far enough to still cast an honest vote, the power to judge the politician's conduct must ultimately rest with his constituents.

An ethics panel may offer opinions and reach public conclusions that voters are free to consider -- and opponents free to exploit. But once such boards can tell our elected officials on what matters they can and cannot vote, who really represents and governs us?