The Voting Process and Results of the Secretary Treasurer Election

Voting for the Secretary Treasurer position was an anonymous vote, not the voice vote or the standing vote on the Convention floor.

Delegates are issued “Monopoly Money” ballots in different denominations representing the number of member votes they are casting. Each of the six delegates from Local 53 had around 324 votes. The delegate uses their standard issue #2 pencil to mark the ballots for their candidate of choice.

Local 53 Delegates refused to use the pencils and instead voted with pens. The issue of the use of pencils would come up on the floor later in the day. It was a secret ballot but based on conversations I had with all the Local 53 delegates I believe our 1944 votes all went for Danny Donohue, from Long Island, NY, President of Local 1000.

The numbers for the entire Convention as of Tuesday morning June 30 were as follows:
38 Councils, 34 Retiree Councils, 2509 Locals, 3569 Delegates representing 1,302,480 in 50 states and Puerto Rico. There were more than 1.3 million votes cast in the Secretary Treasurer election.

Late on Thursday the election results were announced by the Elections Committee. There were some where in the neighborhood of 4000 disqualified ballots, these were ones marked for more than one candidate or left blank. There were around 1500 votes for the 3rd candidate, Mark Foley from California, President of Local 2019. Mark indicated that he would run for the position again in 2012.
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The Co-Chair of the Elections Committee announced that the election had gone to Lee by approximately 4300 votes. Let’s do the math together. Over 1.3 million ballots cast, 4300 votes different between the top two candidates.

That is a difference of 4/10ths of 1%. If an election for public office were to come out so close then an automatic recount would be triggered. Not so for our Union election.

To Danny’s credit he congratulated Lee on his victory and pledged unity in the Union.
The following day Danny Donohue issued a letter that included the following;

“I also know that many of you have profound doubts about the conduct of this election. I did not believe that any purpose would be served by contesting its outcome here at the convention. But I do want you to know that I intend to immediately call on the International Executive Board to have and independent review conducted of the entire election.”

The IEB meet immediately after the close of the Convention.
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