THERE'S NOTHING MORE important to democracy than elections, and nothing more important to elections than absolute, complete transparency. It's crucial that every bit of information about election results is available to the public, easily and in complete detail, the moment it's available.

So we're glad San Francisco elections director John Arntz, who was initially planning to wait as long as two weeks after Election Day to run the final program that will analyze the ranked-choice voting results and declare a winner, has agreed to make at least preliminary results available as soon as possible, probably the next day (see Trail Mix).

That means we'll know on election night who has the most first-place votes in each district, and within 24 hours we'll know how the so-called instant runoff is shaping up (minus some absentee and provisional votes). It's a good start and will help give the public confidence that the new system is working.

But Arntz is still stopping short of releasing the complete computerized data to the press and the public on election night, as soon as it's extracted from the voting-machine memory chips. Releasing the data would allow news outlets (and campaigns, and interested observers) to do their own analysis and their own unofficial projections the moment all the ranked-choice votes are in. Arntz is always cautious, but in this case, he has no reason to hold on to the data: sure, some people will make wild and inaccurate projections, and some will use the wrong computer programs and get the results wrong ... but that happens anyway, in elections all over the country.

Besides, it's not something that should be up to one election official to decide. The election-night data is not only everyone's business, it is, and ought to be, a matter of public record, and if there's no technological reason why he can't give it out right away (and we can't imagine what that would be), then he needs to do so. If Arntz won't agree to release the data, the supervisors and the Elections Commission should tell him to.