Campaign Finance Boards voter-guide fiasco errors are no laughing matter

A near-$7 million bungle by the city Campaign Finance Board is fresh sign that an outfit with huge power over city elections is in dire need of overhaul — if not elimination.The CFB’s voter-outreach arm, NYC Votes, last month spent $6.85 million of taxpayer money mailing 3.5 million “voter information” guides that were riddled with huge errors, from listing Mayor Eric Adams and four other non-candidates as on the ballot in the Democratic primary to falsely “informing” the public about a Republican primary that doesn’t exist.It also left out two entire City Council races.“It’s an interesting error from a system that demands absolute perfection from candidates, where a one letter typo can cost a campaign tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees or even removal from the ballot entirely,” fumed Corinne Fisher to PoliticoNY; she’s one of the candidates the guide falsely lists as on the ballot.NYC Votes also managed to advertise the wrong date for the primary during at least four games at CitiField, Gothamist discovered.Maybe they think Mets fans shouldn’t vote?Or maybe the CFB should adopt a slogan from Casey Stengel’s verdict on the Amazins: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”The board says it’ll mail out new guides with the correct info to all 3 million potential Democratic primary voters; we guess it won’t worry about Republicans who rely on its bad info and head to the polls for a fictional race.All this would be easier to laugh at if the Campaign Finance Board didn’t have such vast and unaccountable power over city campaigns.On Friday, it airily slammed the Andrew Cuomo campaign with a $675,000 penalty because it disapproves of the Cuomo website, following a $622,000 fine two weeks before over the same issue — namely, how an independent pro-Cuomo superPAC can use the site to figure out his chief issues.

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