General Discussion

I was talked in to running for Secretary of our Local Union, no one wanted the hassle. So I win. An election comes up where the president is retiring and 2 people are running for president. We had 1,300 members in our Local. The election was decided by 3 votes but when the election committee gave its report it stated that it threw out 7 ballots for a mistake on the ballot. The election committee screwed up, they should have only disqualified the part of the ballot that was bad and counted the votes for president. So the 2nd place candidate wants to know if those 7 ballots thrown out would have made a difference. It turns out the election committee sealed everything in the ballot box so they didn't know. The president calls me up and tells me to go ahead and open the ballot box to see if there would have been a difference. Big mistake, I did open up a sealed ballot box and sure enough the loser of the election should have won. So the loser files an appeal. Meanwhile the "winner" of the election gets word that I was into a sealed ballot box. Next day I get a phone call from the Assistant Secretary of Labor asking me if I was into a sealed ballot box. Shit man I am in serious trouble, it didn't matter that the president told me to do it. I'm looking at a serious fine, at a minimum. The International Union got involved with the Labor Department and decided to hold a whole new election, which shouldn't have been one of the options but it got me off the hook.

I tell this lengthy tale because it showed me that the federal government investigated what I had done, more than is being done in the Arizona farce.

Oh and the real loser of the election ended up winning big because after all I was in a sealed ballot box doing whatever.