The Hartford Board of Selectmen is scheduled to hold an emergency meeting at 8 a.m. today to discuss the problems with last week’s municipal election.

It’s possible the meeting could be derailed by a single selectman, who refused to help call a similar meeting to order on Monday. Even worse, the meeting could be held in executive session.

The meeting needs to go forward, and it needs to go forward in public.

There were numerous irregularities with the May 17 town election. The name of one candidate for clerk, Monica Mailly, was left off about 10 percent of the ballots. The ballot box was opened while voting was going on, ballots were removed and some voters were asked to recast their ballot. Voting was stopped mid-election while things were sorted out.

In addition, two other candidates for the clerk position received the same number of votes, mandating a runoff election.

There’s no evidence so far that the improprieties of Election Day were motivated by fraud. Inexperience with election law is the most likely cause of the problems. But there were enough mistakes that a new election is justified.

Elections are never perfect. There’s always a margin of error in the way they are conducted and the way the votes are counted. The circumstances of the Hartford election, however, go beyond the normal range of permissible mistakes.

By considering an executive session to discuss the issue, selectmen are risking making the problem much worse. Going behind closed doors to seek a legal opinion on something as public as a contested election can only lead to more questions and more doubts about the entire process.

Legally, the town is entitled to discuss its legal options with an attorney in executive session, but there’s little to be gained from the secrecy. The details of what happened on Election Day are well-known and have been thoroughly reported. Transparency is the key to sorting this mess out. Residents shouldn’t be shut out.

Today’s meeting should happen, it should be public and it should start the process of a new election. Anything less would be a betrayal of the public interest.