The voting might have ended in the UAW runoff election, but the battle over the results is still very much underway.
Challenger Shawn Fain continued to hold a lead as more unresolved challenged ballots were counted this week, according to his campaign, but incumbent President Ray Curry’s camp said it has filed a protest with the independent UAW monitor, alleging issues that affect the integrity of the election.
In addition, Brian Keller, one of the candidates who ran in the initial round of the election last year, issued a call for union members to protest the delayed results. He said in a Facebook video that the results should be finalized so Fain can be sworn in in time for the UAW’s upcoming bargaining convention later this month.
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Counting in the runoff began March 1 in Dayton, Ohio, but was paused on March 4, with officials citing the lengthy process of resolving challenged ballots. The count resumed at the Westin Book Cadillac in Detroit on Thursday but counting did not get underway until late and no results were declared by the monitor’s office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Fain’s camp issued a news release late Thursday saying his victory was all but assured because of the tight margin — a lead of 505 votes out of fewer than 600 challenged ballots left to be counted. The two candidates together had received more than 137,000 votes, according to unofficial results posted by the UAW monitor’s office.
“By now, the writing is on the wall: Change is coming to the UAW. Let’s count every vote and get to work on putting the membership back in the driver’s seat of our union. We’re pressing the monitor to resolve the remaining challenged ballots as quickly as possible,” Fain said in the release, calling it a new day in the union.
The Curry camp, however, offered a vastly different take on the situation.
“UAW members deserve an election process and a result that is free of taint and counts every vote. The monitor is continuing the process, and no outcome has been declared. In addition to uncounted votes, numerous issues regarding disenfranchisement and campaign violations remain,” according to a posting Friday on the Curry team’s website.
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Curry’s team, which said it filed a protest with the monitor, asserted numerous “key concerns” over the election process, including that tens of thousands of ballots were returned as undeliverable despite case law requiring “all reasonable efforts” to make sure members received ballots; that a difference exists between the number of ballot envelopes received and the number of ballots counted; that there are alleged concerns about campaign donations to the opposition, and that rules about campaigning at company turnstiles were inconsistently enforced.
It also questioned the validity of the win of the Region 9 director race, which was one of the three contests in the runoff.
Concerns about participation numbers in the election and that members who wanted to vote were unable to do so have dogged both the initial round and the runoff. Will Lehman, a presidential candidate in the initial round, even filed a federal lawsuit, later dismissed, seeking to extend the deadline for ballots to be returned.
However, the numbers improved in the runoff.
The independent UAW monitor reported that 141,548 ballots had been received by the deadline for the runoff, which was an increase from the 106,790 that came in for the initial election, although it’s not clear how many are deemed ineligible.
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It’s also not clear when additional information will be released by the monitor. The Fain camp said the “remaining unresolved challenged ballots have been stored in signed and sealed boxes, and will be transported back to Dayton, Ohio and stored at a secure site run by Merriman River Group, the election vendor.”
Free Press staff writer Phoebe Wall Howard contributed to this report.
Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com. Become a subscriber.