Cannot Delete Vendor

We are trying to delete a vendor in Accounts Payable Vendor Entry. The system will not delete the vendor, however. We keep getting a message "Edit history exists for this vendor, therefore vendor name and address will be inactivated. Continue?" Why can't we delete the record?

This functionality is in place to prevent a vendor number from being re-used with existing history. For example, if you create a new vendor, edit any of the information, then delete the vendor, there are edit history records associated with that vendor id. If you were to re-use the number, the existing edit history could become attached to the new record, giving inaccurate data. To avoid this, the system will deactivate a vendor ID with edit history, but will not delete it.