Letter: Don’t gut checks and balances

Saturday, April 29, 2006 | 7:28 a.m.

The Las Vegas Sun's reports of April 26 and 27 on what can best be described as a hostile takeover of the county clerk's office is just one more example of an imperial judiciary on the march.

As pointed out in the April 26 Sun article, the clerk's office has a specific and important role to play in the system of checks and balances, which is why it was put into the Nevada Constitution in the first place.

However, when you're stuck with a judiciary that does not accept any checks on its power and believes it can rewrite the Constitution at will by judicial fiat, then it's easy to see how the clerk position suddenly becomes a "ministerial office inherent to the judicial branch."

The efficiency argument is worthless. Our system of checks and balances is designed to be inefficient to protect us against the unwarranted seizure of power by any part of government. The office of county clerk is placed beautifully within the system to do just that, and the judges should be ashamed of themselves for trying to undo that protection.

There's still time and wiggle room for the judges to back away from their ill-conceived takeover plan and I sincerely hope they will. If not? Well, it is an election year.

Knight Allen, Las Vegas