dpkg-reconfigure forces setting of root password

OK it doesn't really force it, but it appears to:
 You need to set a password for 'root', the system administrative
 account. A malicious or unqualified user with root access can have
 disastrous results, so you should take care to choose a root password
 that is not easy to guess. It should not be a word found in dictionaries,
 or a word that could be easily associated with you.
 .
 A good password will contain a mixture of letters, numbers and punctuation
 and should be changed at regular intervals.
 .
 Note that you will not be able to see the password as you type it.

If you enter an empty password, it seems to fall back to ubuntu-ish behavior and use sudo, but I fell for the instructions and entered a root password. This dialog should either be removed or reworded. The problem occurs if I run dpkg-reconfigure passwd or dpkg-reconfigure -a.