When Mayor Bloomberg proposed a pact to ban any spending for or against a ballot initiative to bring nonpartisan elections to New York City politics, our first thought was that the famously generous mayor had all of a sudden decided to start watching his own wallet. Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire, wants nonpartisan elections, after all, and if he is to get the city charter amended to implement them, he might have to spend millions of his own money on convincing citizens to vote in favor of charter revision. The Democrats responded to Mr. Bloomberg by offering a ban on television advertising on both sides of the nonpartisan election issue; Mr. Bloomberg’s press secretary responded yesterday by apparently suggesting that “print ads, direct mail, radio ads, internet operations, political consultants and other campaign tactics” also be banned.

So long as we’re suggesting, however wryly, that Mr. Bloomberg has a financial interest here, we might as well disclose our own — strictly as a business matter, it would be in this newspaper’s short-term interest to ban every means of communicating with the voters on the charter reform issue other than print advertisements in five-morning-a-week broadsheet daily newspapers based on Chambers Street.

But what’s good for Mr. Bloomberg’s wallet or for that of one newspaper isn’t necessarily what’s best for the city. Mr. Bloomberg’s approach — and that of the Democrats suggesting a ban on television advertisements — seems to be that a less vigorous public debate is better, and that a less informed electorate can make better decisions. This runs counter to our ex perience, to the relevant academic research, to the logic of the First Amend ment, and to common sense, which all suggest that more speech leads to a more-informed electorate that can make wiser decisions.

The only argument that the proposed spending ban is consistent with is the illogic of the nonpartisan elections proposal itself. The advocates of nonpartisan elections seem to imagine that if voters were only prevented from learning from the ballot what party a candidate belongs to, the voters would make better decisions.

Mr. Bloomberg’s press secretary yesterday called nonpartisan elections a “good government reform.”If it’s so important, you have to wonder why Mr. Bloomberg seems so willing to enter into a pact with the reform’s opponents to prevent the voters from getting a thorough airing, by all methods, of the points on all sides of this issue.