Release the records

The last bit of business from New York City’s June 22 party primaries gets wrapped up this afternoon when the Board of Elections meets and convenes as the Board of Canvassers in the City of New York to certify the hand count for the final unresolved contest, a City Council primary in central Harlem.

Then the canvassers will adjourn, and the same people will resume the weekly stated meeting of the BOE. Those commissioners must then do as they pledged and release the full cast vote record from the primary, the raw data that they have sat on for eight weeks since the polls closed. They promised it would come after certification was complete. And that’s now. This must not wait days or weeks more. There is no reason to not hand it to anyone who asks starting today.

Consider this editorial a formal request for the information. The Daily News will happily pass it along to all.

The first time out using ranked-choice voting for mayor and other offices was such an embarrassing mess because the BOE did not let the campaigns and the press and the public see the electorate’s choices, as soon as the information came in. The board bumblers didn’t want to confuse people with partial results, so they held the info themselves and offered sneak peeks. Then they fell on their faces with a human error in the Queens office and had to retract the results. They did it their way and got maximum confusion.

The cure to shredded trust is total transparency. Yet even a month after voting ended, on July 20, with the certification of the victory of Eric Adams, they still withheld the cast vote record due to a pair of City Council hand counts. With the last of the last now complete, the excuses must end.

There is a bill in Albany to require the release of the cast vote record and ballot images. But it’s not law yet. The board mustn’t wait until it’s forced.