Vote of no confidence

The biggest threat to voting in New York isn’t a Trump-inspired Republican push to restrict the franchise as in other states, but the hometown Board of Elections, which in botch after botch, year after year, has undermined public confidence in the integrity and fairness of how we choose our leaders.

None other than the liar-in-chief draws his ammunition about nonexistent fraud and conspiracy from the local bunglers, like after the wrong ranked-choice results were released last month and after the interminable East Side congressional primary count from last year. Their smoke of supposedly harmless errors supplies him with the means to set real fires.

For no good reason, ranked-choice voting has now been given a bad reputation nationally, thanks to the board’s inability to handle either speed or accuracy. While sometimes they get it right, like with online requests and tracking of absentee ballots, dysfunction is the norm.

Today, the board will certify primary victors like Eric Adams and the rest, all save two contests needing hand counts. That means the promise of the raw ballot “cast vote records” will have to wait until every race is settled. That’s ridiculous; the data should’ve come straight away.

Latrice Walker, chair of the Assembly Committee on Elections, held a hearing yesterday on rankedchoice voting. A bunch of people complained and then a bunch of people offered praise. Yet the Assembly still hasn’t matched the Senate and passed the bill necessary to allow the board to legally publish the cast vote record. The board should do it anyway. It will be the first time they break the law for the right reasons.

Gov. Cuomo signed six election bills on Friday making some small fixes. Absent amending the state Constitution (we were virtually alone in supporting a state constitutional convention in 2019), meaningful improvement can only come when the county political party bosses pick qualified people instead of partisan stooges and the City Council only ratifies those commissioners who have a clue. At this rate, we’ll be waiting forever.