UFT Unity Doesn't Want You to Vote

Our voting percentage is abysmal, and the bosses like it that way.

UFT bosses supported extended voting for New Yorkers, but won’t extend voting for members. In a resolution dated January 16, 2019, the UFT bemoans the fact that only 57 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot in the 2016 presidential election. That’s true, and they’re right. Whatever your political positions are, your representatives are important. You can love them, you can hate them, but honestly, if you didn’t even bother to vote you have no right to complain.

That doesn’t mean we can’t make things easier, though, and encourage more voting. New York State has impressively increased voting opportunities. You can vote on many days, and in many places. You no longer need to stand in front of an elementary school, waiting for the doors to open and praying traffic will be forgiving enough to allow you to make it to work on time.

This year, I voted a week before Election Day. I went to the Recreation Center in Freeport. I didn’t have to wake up early, run out before the polls close, or do anything inconvenient at all. I’ve been doing this for a few years. I certainly hope it’s increased voting, but regardless, voting in NY State is easier than it’s ever been before. If you support democracy, that’s a good thing.

In NY State, you can now vote for seven days before the election. You can vote on weekends. You can vote on your day off. You can even send an absentee ballot through the mail, if that’s your thing. Except in 2020, with presidential passions running high, I haven’t had to wait more than two minutes to vote.

In the last UFT leadership election, only about 26% of members voted. That’s less than half of the NY State 57% the Unity-dominated Delegate Assembly deemed unacceptable. This notwithstanding, in 2022 Unity bosses didn’t move to offer members alternate modes of voting.

You’d think they’d be jumping up and down to make that happen. It’s embarrassing that, evidently, 74% of us don’t give a crap who runs our union. There are a lot of ways we could fix that. For example, we could vote in the schools rather than by mail. In the last UFT Contract election, “The UFT issued 115,840 ballots, of which 95,725 votes were returned.”

By having the vote in schools, we achieved 82.6% participation. (I don’t like to brag, but I have friends who are math teachers, and they help me.) Of course, this does not take into account the retiree vote. Still, it increases participation enormously. In any case, there are other options.

SBO voting is now done online. DA voting is now done online. It seems to work. If UFT bosses wanted to, they could offer by-mail voting, in-school voting and online voting. They could poll people for their preferences. If you attend the DA, or retiree meetings, you know they poll us as to whether we wish to attend online or in person. They could do the same asking us how we wish to vote.

Is that too complicated? Then simplify it somehow. There are endless possibilities. But if you want to maximize turnout, you must maximize opportunity. I’m old enough to recall when mailboxes were a daily necessity. Most of my colleagues are not. But I use mailboxes very rarely now. I’d be much more inclined to vote online, if I had half a chance.

There have been efforts to introduce electronic voting. They’ve been voted down by the rubber-stamp Executive Board, and I’m not sure whether it’s ever made its way the the Delegate Assembly. I know that it’s also gone to the UFT Election Committee. Predictably, the Unity bosses who dominate the committee rejected any and all improvements to our failing process.

Sure, there are excuses. We retirees are too old and feeble to figure out how to vote on these new-fangled computer thingies, maybe. It’s just too complicated. We’ve always done it that way. We’ve never done it any other way!

But excuses are just that. Our voting percentage hovers somewhere just below abysmal. If we want to fix it, we will open up new avenues, as many as possible. We will send multiple emails to members who don’t vote, and keep following up until a. they vote, or b. we run out of time.

As things stand, it’s crystal clear that Mulgrew and the lowlier Unity bosses are quite content with our miserable voting percentage. Perhaps that’s the only way they stay in office.

If they want to prove me wrong, they can open up voting, beginning with the retiree election this spring. Please, spare me the “old people don’t like computers” line. I’m just fine with a computer, and so are plenty of people my age.

I don’t need to be stereotyped as some Luddite sitting outside yelling kids to get off my lawn. What I need is representation. I know I haven’t got it because the bosses, without my vote or voice, are trying to take away my health care. As far as health care is cocerned, I’m represented by NYC Retirees, not UFT bosses.

And if the bosses think I’m wrong, they can put health care changes on a ballot, for both retiree and in-service members. That would surely cause a lot more members to find mailboxes.

But members ought to have multiple opportunities to vote. The bosses endorse such options for New Yorkers, but deny them to dues-paying union members. The hypocrisy of this position is absolute.

But go ahead, Mulgrew. Prove me wrong.

If it’s all the same to you, I shall sit while I wait.