UFT Election Task Force Minority Report

At 5pm last Friday, May 29, the members of the UFT Election Task Force concluded reviewing and voting on a recommendation that will be made this evening, June 1, to the UFT Executive Board. A Task Force majority comprised of all the voting members of Unity (10 members) and all the members of ARISE (2 members) voted YES in favor of preserving the status quo for the years ahead; recommending a continuation of mail-ballot and in-person voting, with no electronic voting in the 2028 unionwide officer election. All three members representing A Better Contract (ABC) on the Task Force voted NO to sending this recommendation to the UFT Executive Board. Below is our rationale. To read a very detailed and technical version of the minority report that we have sent to the UFT Executive Board, CLICK HERE.

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UFT Election Task Force Minority Report - June 1, 2026

We are submitting this minority report because we don’t agree with the ARISE/Unity majority recommendation being submitted and we don’t think the work behind it is finished.

What’s being presented to the Executive Board looks like the outcome of a full review, but based on our experience on the Task Force and what’s in this report, it feels like the decision was already made before we ever met.

The Task Force was supposed to look at electronic, in-person, and hybrid voting, and figure out what could work within LMRDA requirements. That didn’t really happen, and the scope of the Task Force narrowed pretty quickly. Remote electronic voting, and any real look at hybrid options, was set aside without being fully examined.

We didn’t speak with unions that are already using electronic voting. We didn’t look closely at how their systems actually work. We didn’t dig into voter turnout in any meaningful way, or how members use different voting methods. We met with one labor attorney, who the Task Force didn’t choose as a group, and that ended up shaping the direction of ARISE and Unity’s majority recommendation.

There was no in-person, substantive discussion of a final recommendation. No real deliberation or time to work through and consider options together before making a decision. So this doesn’t read like the result of a full process. It reads like something that got wrapped up.

A lot of the report focuses on risk: legal challenges, scrutiny, things going wrong. Those are real concerns. But they’re not unique to us. Other unions are dealing with the same issues and still running hybrid systems that include electronic voting within LMRDA. We didn’t spend time learning from them. We didn’t ask what worked or what didn’t. We didn’t check our assumptions against real experience. Instead, the uncertainty became the reason to stop.

We don’t believe the ARISE/Unity majority recommendation against remote electronic voting, in particular, is supported by the presentation we received or by the Department of Labor guidance it relies on. Instead, it leans heavily on what is “well-established” or “familiar,” without identifying any specific legal barrier that would prohibit or meaningfully discourage it. At the same time, the majority recommendation acknowledges that technology and guidance have evolved and that electronic voting may become viable. That suggests the issue isn’t legality so much as comfort with the current system.

More broadly, the absence of a clear “safe” option for electronic voting is treated as a reason to avoid it. But the same is true for the system we already use. Mail-ballot elections are also challenged, and they’re judged by the same basic standards such as ballot secrecy, access, notice, and overall fairness. The ARISE/Unity majority recommendation doesn’t show that electronic systems are any less capable of meeting those standards.

In fact, many of the challenges associated with current methods, lost ballots, outdated addresses, inconsistent administration, chain-of-custody concerns, are exactly the kinds of problems modern electronic systems are designed to reduce. Secure platforms can incorporate verification, encryption, audit logs, and protections against duplicate voting in ways that strengthen accountability and transparency. But we didn’t seriously examine whether those tools could improve the process. Instead, the ARISE/Unity majority recommendation assumes that older methods are more reliable simply because they are more familiar.

We also didn’t spend time looking at how electronic voting is already being used across the labor movement. There’s no indication that we studied unions that have implemented it, spoke with organizations currently using it, or reviewed their outcomes. There was no pilot, no vendor evaluation, and no structured attempt to test feasibility. That kind of due diligence is normally part of making a recommendation like this, and it didn’t happen here. The same is true for in-chapter voting, which was raised repeatedly but never seriously explored.

And then there’s turnout. About 29% of members voted in the last officer election. That’s a problem. The majority recommendation doesn’t spend much time on it. It doesn’t ask why participation is that low, or whether the current system has something to do with it. It doesn’t look at whether different approaches might make it easier for people to vote.

That’s not surprising, because we didn’t spend time on it as a Task Force either. Turnout was never seriously examined, and no effort was made to study how different voting methods might affect participation. When something this central is left out, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the goal was to protect the current system, not fully examine the alternatives.

It also doesn’t reflect who our members actually are. We have retirees, people working long hours, people with families, and people who don’t have an easy way to vote during the day. Not everyone works in a school building, and not everyone works for the Department of Education. One system isn’t going to work the same for all of them.

Still, the direction here is to stick with what we have and treat any change as a risk. We don’t agree with that. When less than one in three UFT members votes, something isn’t working. At the very least, there are barriers in the way. We should be trying to understand them, not moving past them. If we don’t, this just becomes normal. And once that happens, it’s not just about turnout; it’s about whether members think it’s worth participating at all. That’s what’s missing here.

The issues that came up in our meetings weren’t small. They’re the kinds of things you have to answer if you’re going to run a fair election: how other unions handle hybrid systems, how they protect ballot secrecy while allowing observation, how they prevent double voting, how they build trust, and what actually happens to turnout when they make changes. We never got those answers.

Without that, limiting the options going forward isn’t based on evidence. It reads like the conclusion was already there, or at least looks that way; and everything else followed from it. That’s a foregone outcome instead of a full review. This isn’t just about how ballots are cast. It’s about whether members think the process is open to them and worth taking part in it.

Procedural Concerns
A few basic issues with how this was handled: One of ARISE’s two representatives was repeatedly left off Task Force communications and should have been included. ABC and ARISE were repeatedly referred to as caucuses like Unity; but both ABC and ARISE were election slates in the 2025 election, not caucuses. Additionally, the final ARISE/Unity majority recommendation doesn’t reflect the full range of questions and concerns that were presented during our meetings.

Minority Recommendation

We don’t think the Executive Board should adopt the ARISE/Unity majority recommendation as it stands.

The Task Force needs to finish the work. That means actually talking to unions that are already using hybrid or electronic voting, looking closely at how those systems work in practice, including security and oversight, and understanding what those choices do to voter turnout, access, cost to the union, and member trust. We should then come back with a consensus recommendation based on that full picture.

UFT members deserve a system they can all use and believe in.

We’re not there yet.

In union solidarity,

Daniel Alicea, Katie Anskat, Chad Hamilton