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 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 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 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.”
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?