If it's anything like Debian, sudo might depend on an editor (*any* editor) so that sudoedit works, and vim is just the first one in a dependency OR condition. Do you have another console editor installed (like Pico, Micro, Emacs)?
Yes, in theory. Though see my previous mail.
They currently hard-depend upon vim-minimal.
Maybe Debian and derivatives solved this in a better way through their alternatives subsystem.
Mihai