America’s representative system relies on voters trusting that their legal ballots will be counted, but the Left’s push for Big Labor unions in every aspect of American society threatens to erode that firm foundation.
How can American voters trust the integrity of the system if the election workers who manage it join a hyper-partisan union that endorses, bankrolls, and helps elect Democrats?
Yet that is exactly what election workers in Chicago are attempting to do.
Employees at the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners sought to unionize and join the Service Employees International Union Local 73 in July 2024. The SEIU local said the union would include between 80 and 90 election workers, including clerks, polling place investigators, equipment specialists, and others.
The board argued that the state’s election code bars employees from engaging in “political activity,” and therefore, the employees cannot join the union. The board noted in an August filing that SEIU 73 lobbies legislatively, endorses candidates, and makes political contributions.
“Plainly, these ‘political matters’ are precisely the type of activity in which the Union and its members regularly and effectively engage,” the filing reads, according to the Chicago Tribune. Board workers “strictly cannot, under any circumstances,” engage in those activities, the board argued.
An administrative law judge ruled the other way; however, the Tribune more recently reported.
Most private-sector workers (94.1%) do not belong to a union, while about a third of government employees at all levels (32.2%) have joined a union, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As the Left has championed unions, even left-leaning nonprofit workers—who ostensibly work because they believe in a cause—have unionized against management.
Although President Donald Trump and Republicans have started to reach out to union members, the superstructure of Big Labor remains vehemently opposed to them.
The Union’s Political Activity
The SEIU has a long history of endorsing Democrats, donating to their campaigns, and mobilizing voters to turn out for them.
The SEIU endorsed Kamala Harris last year (after endorsing Joe Biden for reelection), Biden in 2020, Hillary Clinton in 2015, and Barack Obama in 2011 and 2008. The SEIU gave $6.5 million to Democrats in the 2024 cycle and only $4,331 to Republicans. It spent $12.6 million on outside groups, with $10.9 million going to support Democrats and $1.7 million going to oppose Republicans. The SEIU spent only $47,793 (0.38% of its spending) on supporting Republicans.
The SEIU also teamed up with other major unions—the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees—to launch “a coordinated, multi-state voter outreach initiative to turn out voters in support of Harris-Walz in key battleground states” last October. The presidents of those unions all teamed up to campaign for the Democrats together.
None of this should be surprising. The SEIU, AFSCME, NEA, and AFT all contributed to the woke left-wing activist groups that staffed and advised the Biden administration.
The SEIU didn’t just run national efforts, however. SEIU Local 73—the union Chicago’s election workers are aiming to join—touted its effort in “hitting the doors and making phone calls in support of pro-worker candidates as part of ‘Purple Power Day.’” This local union and its allies urged “voters to elect candidates Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin.” The SEIU noted that this formed part of its “$200 million worker-funded campaign” to “mobilize 25,000 SEIU volunteers nationwide.”
In May 2021, the SEIU’s Illinois State Council endorsed Democrat Alexi Giannoulias for secretary of state. In the press release announcing this endorsement, the state council noted that “SEIU Local 73 represents 2,600 workers, or more than half of all Secretary of State’s office employees.”
What Does the Law Say?
The Municipal Code of Chicago bans employees from engaging in a long list of “prohibited political activity,” including “Preparing for, organizing, or participating in any political meeting, political rally, political demonstration, or other political event”; “assisting at the polls on Election Day on behalf of any political organization or candidate for elective office or for or against any referendum question”; and “helping in an effort to get voters to the polls.”
The code specifically bans employees from engaging in any such activity during “compensated time.”
Illinois law goes further in restricting members of the State Board of Elections. It expressly states that employees shall not “contribute, either financially or in services or goods or any other way, to any political party, candidate or organization engaged in political activity.”
Yet that statute may not govern the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, which is local.
By joining SEIU Local 73, Chicago elections employees would be contributing to an “organization engaged in political activity,” just by paying their union dues.
Even if the city or state’s ethics rules allow it, election workers should not join an explicitly partisan union that shovels money behind Democrats and organizes get-out-the-vote campaigns.
Americans still harbor doubts about the 2020 presidential election, and polls suggest Democrats are more likely than Republicans and independents to trust delayed election results.
In a representative government like ours, leaders derive their legitimacy from the voters. But if voters cannot trust the people who manage the election infrastructure to remain neutral, how long will they trust election outcomes?
Tyler O’Neil is senior editor at The Daily Signal and the author of two books: “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” and “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Tyler O’Neil.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
Unions became popular with politicians only after they’ve stopped doing what their original purposes were and became a political force for hire and for sale to those who payed most Nothing to do with poor and oppressed worker who pays.
Another political demon at work. Power still resides in the people. They must become more informed and more involved in every aspect of public activities which essentially exert controls over individual and family lives. The power of a unified populace is necessary to resist the machinations of the unions’ leadership and the politicians they buy.
Unions in the private sector,iffy,government unions,look at USPS and other government entities CONTROLLED by unions,then tell me.
Leftist doing whatever they can to set up their power structure that can’t be torn down!
Unions used to go Dem or may do so & we lose again more races
Wow only time will tell!
Once upon a time (80-100 years before I was born) unions served a purpose. They helped protect workers from corporate abuse. Now though I believe unions have outlived their usefulness. Also, democrats trust delayed election outcomes because they rigged those elections in their favor. The fact that all of this is going on in Chicago, the most corrupt city in the nation, is no surprise.
Big Labor Unions, or any unions for that fact should not be allowed to “influence” their employee members on how to vote and what party to vote for. That’s why Unions in general are corrupt and have been for many, many years. They cause trouble for the boss, collect money from members and do absolutely nothing except steal from all of them. Unions are run by the MAFIA and should have been corralled fifty years ago by government restrictions in the USA. They followed the people leaving Europe to come to America and they set up their own system of highway robbery, illegal gambling, drugs, prostitution, etc. That’s what runs the UNIONS….all the filthy money they can get and if you don’t pay you don’t work. Unions going “straight” is as much of a laugh as the democrats going “straight”.
SEIU is a NASTY union. My friends wife ran for state rep (and won) but SEIU ran ads stating his wife was responsible for their sons disability (drug use.) They sued SEIU and won. Next election SEIU did the EXACT SAME AD.
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Do not giver SEIU direct access to run election ‘biden malarky’ operations.
The issue/problem with unions is not what they have achieved for the workers in terms of benefits/wages/scheduling but how the leadership has decided that the entire membership of workers will act together and put in place measures to keep employers from firing at will. The problem with this, creates na illusion in the workers that their employees can’t fire them if they have poor performance issues, if they were not correctively documented in a certain method, The leadership of the union in today’s age also demands or expects that every union member is required to vote and have the chosen selection that the leadership ( without asking the membership to decide) how to do things at their job and outside their job when they go to vote–a form of controlling the vote, especially if they union has access to seeing how each individual vote was made–a very subtle threat to control the way an individual can vote.
Election officials –I am referring to those who are full time employees year round in the various Board of Election Agencies–and not the individuals who work the polls after being trained by 2 training sessions—do not need to unionized because they by the way they retain/give instructions to those who work the polls are receiving adequate compensation for the hours they put in and their staff numbers which is mostly administration work allows for them to be scheduled without working beyond the allowed hours as set by labor laws. I am quite sure that this attempt to unionized is probably caused by the tendency to make it a all hands on deck for those long Election Days when most people prefer to work much shorter shifts and the classification of the hours worked for the day as a salary pay versus an hourly pay which can be easily adjusted to adding a time clock method to measure hours worked and making sure that there’s enough staffing per hour which creates a different issue that unionizing will not help. This happens to be a job that doesn’t work in a controlled hour schedule , especially when to hiring contract states in clear concise language the expectations of the job duties.Asking a union to step in and negotiate the terms of employment is not necessary.
This ruling should instantly be overturned!
Stories like this makes me wish “The Windy City” would blow away!