Editor's Note: Since this article was published on April 25, 2019, the New York City Board of Elections removed the voter enrollment data from its website, replacing it with a message that directs people to request the public records through the Board’s office. The move came hours before BOE executive director Michael Ryan was scheduled to testify before the City Council at an April 30 oversight hearing.

For the first time in its history, the New York City Board of Elections has published voter enrollment data on its website, including individual names, addresses and party affiliations for all of the city’s 4.6 million active registered voters.

The information, arranged in a grid by borough and party affiliation, lists each Assembly district, which in turn links to a PDF that has all the voters in that district arranged by address.

Voter enrollment information is considered a public record, a fact that surprises and discomforts people not involved with campaigns and elections. But this is the first time the Board has made all the data free and available on its website—for use by candidates and nosy neighbors alike—in a move that’s winning a mix of praise and condemnation from elections experts.

According to a Board of Elections spokeswoman, the agency posted the information in February after the state legislature passed a package of election reform bills that consolidated state and federal primary elections in June. Traditionally, state and county party primary contests were held in September and only the congressional primary was held in June. The change in primary dates meant candidates had to collect signatures sooner to get on the ballot.

"It was the method for us to meet our obligations under the new statute and enable candidates to begin the timely gathering of signatures to qualify for the ballot," NYC BOE spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez-Diaz said in statement, adding, "By law, this information is a public record."

Voter rolls indeed are public record. In years past, when someone wanted to access voter enrollment information, it could be  purchased from the Board of Elections in a printed book or on a CD. But Board officials said their print vendor was not able to produce enough copies of the voter enrollment book in time for candidates to begin gathering petition signatures in February, which is why they posted the information online.

"It’s good, it’s transparent, we like transparency," said election lawyer Jerry Goldfeder. He said the Board should have done this a long time ago as long as they do not include date of birth, email address and phone numbers, which  the City Board did not publish online. (Those personal details, however, can still be accessed by people who purchase full copies of the voter rolls.)

But one person’s transparency is another’s invasion of privacy. Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause NY, called the move "shocking," particularly after states, including New York, refused to turn over voter data to the federal government for President Trump’s now defunct voter fraud commission.

At the time, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo refused to turn over the state’s data calling the electoral process "sacred" and pointing to "strong safeguards in place to prevent sharing of sensitive voter data and harassment against those who exercise their right to vote."

Common Cause also filed a suit under the federal Privacy Act to prevent the Trump administration from collecting voter data, which the organization argued could be use to target and suppress voting rights across the country. Trump shut down the commission in January, 2018.

"How in the world is the New York City Board putting voters names and addresses just out on a public website," Lerner said. "That’s wrong."