Fred,
I believe the original quote came from Stalin. His sense of humor ran in that direction, too. Monitoring election integrity has to be done everywhere, but in the Chicago Teachers Union’s major elections, the votes are counted by the American Arbitration Association, and in the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund the votes are counted by a bonded outside group as well. Having observed vote counts in both elections on several occasions (most dramatically the runoff in June 2010 that put Karen Lewis and the CORE team in power in the CTU), I was there to attest to the integrity of the elections, with any small possible errors irrelevant to the final counts. Doesn’t IEA have a provision for candidates to mail their own pitches to the voters, and for observers during the vote counting?
– George Schmidt
These are all good questions, George.
All but two Representative Assembly elections are run by the hundreds of locals in the state according to Illinois Labor Relations Act law. Those two are the student delegate election and the retired delegate election. Those are run state-wide out of IEA headquarters in Springfield. Since I am fairly new to this, I have not fully investigated. As a local president, we ran our own elections for delegate. The two-statewide elections for delegates are held during a different time frame than the locals run their elections. Nomination forms are mailed and appear on line. Voting is done by mail-in ballot.
Last year, when I first ran and won as a NEA RA retired delegate, I protested the fact that many IEA Retired members did not appear to receive ballots. And that there was not enough time to request another ballot and still get it to Springfield by the deadline. There was no published instructions on what members should do if they did not get a ballot in time. In response, the leadership extended the voting time by a week and promised to publish instructions in the Advocate, the IEA member newsletter.
But they forgot to do this. After I protested again, the instructions were only later made available online. If you knew where to look. As for who does the counting and under what supervision? This needs looking into.
Could I have received access to IEA Retired members for campaigning? Rest assured we will find out, as I plan to run – and encourage other than the usual suspects – to run as IEA Retired delegates to the NEA RA this year. As the comments here show, there is much that needs to be looked into about Retired membership and voting and we will look into it.
And we will report it here. Thanks.
The issues that have come up here from those commenting include:
Why isn’t the IEA making a more concerted effort to recruit members to IEA Retired and make joining easier?
Why doesn’t IEA Retired run its own elections? Why is this done by a staff person at the headquarters in Springfield?
Too many members have reported not getting ballots.
Who can watch the ballot count?
What is preventing candidates for IEA Retired from being given access to members throughout the state with campaign material?
Fred Klonsky 
I never received a ballot.
I can’t help quoting from Mr. Previti’s post: “any group of people who elected Ken Swanson deserve Ken Swanson.” The biggest challenge to change in Illinois will be to convert the go-along-get-along members into involved activists. Where I serve as AR I most often hear “please don’t mention my name” following any complaint. Of course, this is understandable after SB7. At Lobby day after SB7 passed, IEA speakers kept saying “it could have been worse.” Well, guess what, it is worse. It was no surprise to me that when you don’t stand up, they come back for more. Thank you Fred for taking this on. I’m disappointed you will not be at the spring RA. I wish you luck in getting to the NEA RA. Your voice is needed.
Dear Fred
The closest comparison to your election I can make,being a CTU member,
is our election for the retired teacher spot on our Pension Board.
George spelled out the procedure but I would like to add this to your readers.
Every person who can cast a ballot gets the bio.of every candidate in the same
envelop.It is a professional brochure well stocked with information.This is necessary
because pensioners are spread across the entire world.I personally know one in Serbia.
To prevent fraud and maintain privacy everything comes through the pension board.
Perhaps the IEA should adapt similar rules for its widely scattered retirees.
Bob Busch
Ken Swanson, Bob Haisman and other duly “elected” IEA Retired representatives could soon enact three union reinforcing, democratic building changes that would increase solidarity, confidence, participation and credibility in IEA.
1) Have the first ever IEA Retired membership drive. Our names and addresses are already there. Insist on email email addresses wherever possible to bring us into the middle of the second decade of the 21st Century forms of communication.
2) Bring the voting system into the 21st Century.
3) Follow the path already used successfully by our fellow union members to assure a fair ballot distribution and count.
If their is a true belief in democracy, a well informed voting electorate, and the future of a meaningful union, there should be no difficulty in enacting this immediately and performing it very soon thereafter.
If they choose not to do so, the IEA is dead as far as meeting the needs of teachers is concerned.