www.sosballot.org

Harkin hints 'card-check' bill could move during lame-duck session of Congress

NLRB’s Becker is already under investigation

The Obama-Pelosi Lame Duck Strategy

Save Our Secret Ballot Chairman Istook Responds to Jimmy Hoffa

Washington, DC - Earlier today, a link to a Teamsters press release appeared on Twitter: http://twitter.com/efca. In this release, Teamster president Hoffa praised the House and Senate sponsors of card check and asked, "Since when is the secret ballot a basic tenet of democracy?"

Upon reading this statement, SOS Ballot Chairman Rep. Ernest Istook responded, "Mr. Hoffa's statement is the epitome of arrogance and willful ignorance. The secret ballot has been a basic tenet of democracy since its earliest beginnings in Greece. Skipping ahead a few millennia, modern democracy has relied on secret ballots to ensure that the voting process is untainted by coercion and intimidation, something I think he may be familiar with. He should ask those Democratic sponsors in the House and Senate if they enjoyed secret ballots in their leadership elections, and he also should ask Rep. George Miller why he felt it necessary to ask the Mexican government to protect secret ballots for their workers.

"SOS Ballot has been conducting a number polls with Wilson Research Strategies on the secret ballot in states where we are launching campaigns, and we have found that this issue enjoys enormous public support, including 90% support in union households. Mr. Hoffa needs to reacquaint himself with the rank and file Teamsters whose dues pay his salary before he makes another arrogant statement. It's clear that the union boss agenda is to oppose secret ballots throughout our society. We cannot let them get their anti-democracy foot in the door because they might never stop. Today they attack the secret ballot rights of their own members; tomorrow it's the rest of us. We saw this before our recent victory in Utah, when the UT AFL-CIO leadership referred to the secret ballot process as anti-democratic," Istook continued.

SOS Ballot is a 501c4 organization dedicated to educating the American public on the continued need for a secret ballot wherever state or federal law requires elections. seeks to protect voters from intimidation and harassment by empowering them to vote whether they wish to have the right to a secret ballot guaranteed in their state constitution. SOS Ballot is currently conducting initiative or legislative campaigns in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah to put constitutional amendment language on the ballot in 2010.

The 47-word amendment says: "The right of individuals to vote by secret ballot is fundamental. Where state or federal law requires elections for public office or public votes on initiatives or referenda, or designations or authorizations of employee representation, the right of individuals to vote by secret ballot shall be guaranteed."

The secret ballot was used locally as an act of post-Civil war southern reconstruction, first as a way to impose a literacy requirement on newly freed slaves. But the secret ballot also protected mostly black voters who faced physical intimidation, even lynching, depending on how their vote was cast. Secret ballots were first used statewide in the Massachusetts governor¹s race 1888 and nationally in 1892 to elect President Grover Cleveland.

SOS Ballot National Advisory Board members include:

(Associations used for identification purposes only)