This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

"A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth." — Michael Kinsley

It seems a huge judicial reach to hold, as U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups did last week, that it is an unconstitutional violation of free speech to dock points from candidates for public office when they say things other people don't like.

Weighing one's words is, after all, integral to any candidate's hope of success. That's why they sometimes get caught saying contradictory things, or why they often seem to go on at great length without really saying anything.

Just ask Gerald "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe" Ford or Mitt "47 percent" Romney how important carefully chosen campaign rhetoric can be.

But if it triggers changes in the absurd process we use to vet candidates for the Utah State Board of Education, the ruling will be a gift to Utah's system of public education.

Waddoups was asked to help a pair of candidates who had submitted their names for open spots on the state school board and had failed to successfully negotiate the state's uniquely dysfunctional winnowing process.

By law, state school board hopefuls are considered by a nominating committee appointed by the governor. That committee must include members from specific walks of life — mostly commercial life — such as mining, finance, agriculture and transportation — as well as some from the educational establishment. Oh, and one parent.

Committee members consider the candidates in whatever manner they choose, in secret or not, before sending to the governor three candidates for every open seat on the state board. The governor picks two finalists for each spot. Only then does the public, in no way consulted or considered up to that point, get to pick between what may be the lesser of two evils. Or, more likely, two total unknowns.

Two jilted hopefuls wanted Waddoups to order their names added to the ballot in November because the system is rigged to exclude people who don't agree with nominating committee members. Waddoups agreed, faulting the law for not including any "neutral criteria" and thus open to an ideological slanting that punishes candidates for speaking their minds.

As if that weren't the complex cost-benefit calculation that all candidates make with every public utterance.

But if the judge's odd ruling leads to reforms so the voters as a whole, not an obscure committee, gets to choose what words offend them, we will soon forget Waddoups' means and be happy to have the reforms it motivated.