Ahmad is the choice for town clerk

The Herald encourages Town of Hempstead voters to return Nasrin Ahmad to the town clerk’s seat. She is, far and away, the most qualified candidate for the job.

Considering the sheer volume of important paperwork that flows through the clerk’s office — building permits, marriage licenses, birth and death certificates, zoning ordinances — organization and synchronization are paramount. And with 17 years of experience in the office, Ahmad has proved that she is more than capable of handling it.

A native Ugandan who was raised in England and speaks four languages, she has taken steps in her two years-plus in the top job of clerk to expand transparency, improve technology and increase accessibility. She extended the office’s hours on Thursdays for those with full-time jobs who cannot make it there in the afternoon. She has pushed to make more forms available online. And she has diversified her staff so it can translate documents for non-English speakers. We strongly urge Ahmad to continue making the office a more user-friendly place.

Her Democratic challenger, Dino Amoroso, is also an immigrant — born in Italy, he has lived in Venezuela and Switzerland as well — who speaks four languages. An attorney and a former president of Nassau Off Track Betting, Amoroso says he would take even larger steps to increase transparency in the clerk’s office.

But it’s worth noting that, as a former deputy district attorney in Brooklyn under Charles Hynes, he was included in a corruption probe by the New York City Department of Investigation, which accused the office of illegally using government money for campaign purposes.

Amoroso called the allegations baseless and said that the probe was politically motivated — the lead investigator for the DOI, he said, once lost a district attorney race to Hynes. Nonetheless, we believe his mere association with an ethics scandal disqualifies him to run for an office that must safeguard documents containing town residents’ personal and private information.

Ahmad, who has a warm and welcoming presence, is a first-rate clerk and has taken steps to move the office into the 21st century. We urge residents to give her another term.