Save Our Secret Ballot Amendment Analysis

The “Save Our Secret Ballot” Amendment was initiated by the state of Arizona and adopted by Utah, South Carolina and South Dakota. The purpose of the amendment was to perpetuate employees’ rights to continue the secret ballot process when determining union organizing activities and representation.
The amendment is in direct response to the Employee Free Choice Act initiative that would allow workers to form unions utilizing a card check election process. The issue promulgated by EFCA’s proposal of card check encompasses a process that could disqualify a group of affected employees from voting for or against union representation due to the “majority” clause and process of the card check voting. The card check provision could conversely cause intimidation and perpetuate a certain undesired direction in applicable union organizing activities.
Pertinent to the participating states’ initiative, the NLRB claims that the SOS amendment is unconstitutional and that the U.S. planned to invalidate the amendment. The
873). States have the ability to add their own stricter by-laws, but it is beyond their rights to lessen the effects of the Constitution. That said, the state secret ballot amendments appear to violate the Supremacy Clause. However, upon reviewing the union election process enforced by the NLRA and NLRB, it appears as though secret ballots are incorporated in the union election process. Unfortunately, they may not always be guaranteed (Hunter, 1999). Further research discovered that Judge Frederick J. Martone ruled the Secret Ballot Amendment, which protects workers’ right to secret ballot in union-organizing elections, is constitutional (Federal Court Upholds Save Our Secret Ballot, Or Does It?, 2012). Given this information, state legislation regarding secret ballots does not violate Federal