^{Democracy & Technology Blog} He should vote!

Hance, thanks for your legal analysis of the FCC merger vote. You’re absolutely right. I don’t see any reason why McDowell should not vote. In fact, I think you make clear that, for reasons of both law and propriety, he has to vote.
The conflict-of-interest rules presumably are in place to prevent government officials from favoring friends or punishing enemies. But if McDowell chose not to vote in this case — pretending to cite the conflict rules — he would be doing just that: favoring friends and punishing old enemies. As you’ve shown, it probably is not within the letter of the law. But such an apparently cynical manipulation absolutely cannot be within the spirit of the law. It turns the whole point of conflict rules inside-out. And, as you’ve also shown, it would not be in keeping with the letter or spirit of his confirmation statement either.
Surely, such an action — or a delay until next June as you have heard — would not only hurt the completely rational and innocuous AT&T-BellSouth merger, but it could poison much of the important work the FCC has to do on other important telecom issues.
I hope McDowell is instead just giving everyone time to have their say and let the back-and-forth between Congress and the FCC general counsel play out before he does the right thing, and votes.
-Bret Swanson