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The anti-Employee Free Choice Act Workplace Fairness Institute put out a statement today highlighting the sentencing of three former Teamsters officials for rigging union elections in light of proposals to solve the "card check" problem by allowing mail-in ballots. While they can be written off as rogue union activists, it does demonstrate the need to protect the integrity of union elections -- especially from officials who denigrate the secret ballot.

At the Teamsters, that denigration starts all the way at the top: "Since when is a secret ballot a basic tent of democracy?" asked Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa. "Town meetings in New England are as democratic as they come, and they don't use the secret ballot. Elections in the Soviet Union were by secret ballot, but those weren't democratic." Of course, the Soviet elections were not democratic because the secret ballots did not contain actual choices. And many town meetings in New England are actually representative town meetings, where the participants are elected by secret ballot, rather than open town meetings. Let me know when somebody is convicted of fraud for rigging the filling of a pothole in some small Western Massachusetts town.