On December 20, rank-and-file socialist candidate for UAW president Will Lehman filed a protest over the UAW bureaucracy’s deliberate efforts to suppress the vote in the first ever direct election for national union officers. The Monitor has not substantively responded and is instead going forward with a second round between Ray Curry and Shawn Fain, two candidates who each received votes from less than 4 percent of eligible voters. On January 23, the UAW Monitor sent an email asking Lehman for additional information, but only about a small element of Lehman’s initial report. The Monitor’s letter read, in part: As relayed to you in this prior correspondence, the Monitor’s Office has received and is currently evaluating your protest and will issue our ruling when our review is complete. In connection with our evaluation of your protest, we are requesting additional information in support of some of your claims. Specifically: Regarding your claim on page 36 of your protest that “UAW officials called security to remove campaign volunteers engaged in protected election activity” at specific workplaces on various dates, please provide additional information regarding each incident so that we may fully evaluate this claim.
Lehman’s response, which was sent January 30, is as follows. ** Mr. Barofsky, This is my response to your January 23 email requesting information about my supporters being obstructed by UAW officials when they tried to campaign at workplaces, as well as about members at certain workplaces being misinformed about voting deadlines. Your email is the only substantive response I have received so far to my December 19 protest to the first round of the elections. In that protest, I demonstrated that hundreds of thousands of members were intentionally disenfranchised by inadequate notice and by deliberate efforts to suppress the vote. Without a doubt, the misconduct you are asking about was part of a deliberate effort to suppress the vote—not just in terms of preventing workers from finding out about my campaign, but in terms of preventing workers from finding out that an election was happening at all. In the hundreds of discussions I personally had with UAW members outside workplaces across the country as part of my campaign, I would estimate that only 10 or 15 percent had heard an election was taking place before I told them. However, you are now pressing ahead with a second round of “runoff” elections despite all the issues I raised. It is clear from the narrow scope of your requests, as well as their adversarial tone, that you intend to overrule my protest and certify the election results. As to your requests for information themselves, you are asking about issues that I first reported to you long before votes were cast in the election—when you still had plenty of time to do something about them. Your own election rules say that any “anti-democratic efforts or policies” will be “swiftly addressed and eradicated” (page 4). Now you are suggesting that you will look into these issues nearly two months after the ballots were already counted—which is hardly “swift.” At any rate, this response should be more than sufficient for you to investigate and hold accountable all the UAW officials involved, and it further underscores why the election needs to be re-done in its entirety. Read the full letter to Monitor → | 
