Joseph Padellaro
December 18, 1998
Page 1
December 18, 1998
VIA FIRST CLASS MAIL
Joseph Padellaro
December 18, 1998
Page 1
Joseph Padellaro
28 Basin Road
Newburyport, MA 01950
Metz Slate
c/o Jim Smith
2833 Cottman Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19149
George O. Suggs, Esq.
Wilburn & Suggs
1015 Locust
Suite 818
St. Louis, MO 63101
Eileen Sullivan, Trustee
Teamsters Local Union 851
360A W. Merrick Road
2nd Floor
Valley Stream, NY 11580
Joseph Padellaro
December 18, 1998
Page 1
Re: Election Office Case No. Post-64-EOH
(PR-422-EO-EOH)
Gentlepersons:
Joseph Padellaro, a candidate for International vice-president on the John Metz Slate, filed a pre-election protest pursuant to Article XIV, Section 2(b) of the Rules for the 1995-1996 IBT International Union Delegate and Officer Election (“Rules”) against Election Officer Michael G. Cherkasky. The protester objects to the conduct of the rerun election because he received information that indicates that five ballots were mailed to members of Local Union 851 at the local union’s address. The protester contends that this “directly impacts the secret ballot election process and jeopardizes the candidacy of any Teamster running for office . . ..” The Election Officer issued a decision on November 24, 1998, denying the protest. The Election Officer’s decision was appealed to the Election Appeals Master. After a hearing in the matter, the Election Appeals Master reversed and remanded the decision to the Election Officer for reclassification as a post-election protest. In In re Padellaro, 98 - Elec. App. - 417 (KC) (December 9, 1998), the Election Appeals Master stated:
Joseph Padellaro
December 18, 1998
Page 1
The Election Officer did in fact attempt to deal with this problem before the ballots were mailed out and extracted 1200 ballots from general mailing for rerouting to members’ residences. At the appeals hearing in this matter, the Election Officer conceded that as many as 8800 additional ballots that could not be identified and extracted prior to the general mailing, may have been sent to union or employer addresses, and will be subject to challenge if returned for tabulation in the rerun vote count.
* * * *
The dimension and impact of the asserted procedural defect cannot be established without recourse to the final outcome of the balloting. The denial of the protest by the Election Officer is therefore reversed, the case is remanded for reclassification as a post election protest, and the Election Officer is directed to further review the matter in light of vote tabulations.
The protest was investigated by Deputy Election Officer Benetta M. Mansfield.
The initial decision did not detail all of the steps the Election Officer took to identify and challenge ballots addressed to IBT members at either Local Unions or employers. As should be apparent from the following description, any mailing to members at these addresses, which constitute only 0.7% of the IBT membership list, did not pose any significant risk to the integrity of the election. Furthermore, The Elections Officer’s identification and challenge of 2,276 members based on local union or employer addresses further reduced the scope of the problem and reflected a reasonable response to the matter.
Many IBT members list as their home address in the TITAN system either a local union address or their employer’s address. In some cases, this is due to security concerns (for members who are police or probation officers, for example). In other cases, local unions input the office address as the member’s home address because members need to have an address within the local union’s geographic area, or the member has only recently joined and the local union uses its address until the member’s actual home address is received.
Joseph Padellaro
December 18, 1998
Page 1
The Election Officer uses the address recorded in the IBT’s TITAN database as the member’s home address as the mailing address for each ballot. The database does not indicate whether a particular listed home address is actually that of a member, an employer, or a local union. Past experience shows, however, that in virtually all cases the home addresses in TITAN do refer to members’ homes. Thus, in the 1991 International Officer Election, and in the initial 1996 International Officer Election, the Election Officer mailed ballots to the address listed in the TITAN system for each member without further analysis. In 1996, the Election Officer was informed of particular ballots returned from a Local Union or employer address, and the Election Officer, therefore challenged those ballots. 600 such ballots were challenged.
The Election Officer took a new approach in 1998. Before mailing the ballots for the International Officer Rerun Election, the Election Officer searched the address database for five members at the same address. The addresses on that list of member clusters were compared by hand to a list of local union and employers addresses. There are over 30,000 IBT employers and 541 local unions, many of which have both street and post office box addresses. By manual comparison of the clustered addresses with known employer or local union addresses the Election Officer identified 2,276 members with such addresses. All 2,276 members with these addresses were identified on the Election Control Roster as challenged ballots. The mail house was able to hold 1,200 of the 2,276 ballots out of the mailing.
A local union or employer address that appeared only one to four times in the 1.4 million member database was not detected by this method. As explained in a letter dated December 3, 1998, to the Election Appeals Master from Counsel to the Election Officer Richard W. Mark:
The Election Officer’s estimate of 10,000 such local union or employer addresses [in the TITAN system] is an extremely rough estimate by our data consultant. The vast majority of such [local union or employer] listings are one or two members at such an address and are impossible to locate through TITAN technology: they would be found only be reading each entry in the database covering the IBT’s 1.4 million members. Therefore, only obvious clusters of such listings can ever be located by computer analysis and challenged by the Election Officer. . . . This information is to clarify that the 10,000 estimate contained in the decision does not relate to local union or employer addresses which are identifiable and could be challenged by the Election Officer.
Other than the 2,276 Election Officer generated challenges to members with local union or employer addresses, no observer, candidate or slate representative challenged any ballot based upon an employer or local union address during the count which took place on December 3 through 7, 1998. In logging the challenged ballots in the Southern and Western Regions, only ten ballots which were challenged for employer or local union addresses were returned in those regions.
Joseph Padellaro
December 18, 1998
Page 1
The inability to identify with certainty every ballot with an employer or local union address is not a procedural defect in the election process or a Rules violation. The Election Officer adopted a reasonable approach to identifying local union and employer addresses and, by that technique, reduced the estimated frequency of this problem from 0.7% to 0.6% of the total IBT mailing list. There is no basis for describing this problem as creating a defective, undemocratic or “corrupt” list.
Because the Election Appeals Master reversed the decision of the Election Officer, the Election Officer will also examine whether the failure to identify 100% of all possible local union and employer addresses “may have affected the outcome of the election.” As the Election Officer previously stated in Cheatem, Post-27-EOH (August 21, 1997),
[T]he Election Officer concludes that this election is presumed to be fair and regular. Therefore, in order to grant a post-election protest, the evidence must overcome this presumption by demonstrating a violation of the Rules that may have affected the outcome of the election. This is consistent with DOL’s standard for certification of supervised elections.
Id. at 105.
Presuming that there were an estimated 10,000 such member records in the TITAN system, and the Election Officer identified and challenged approximately 2,300 such member records, there were 7,700 records of members with a mailing address of a local union or employer. Based upon the fact that out of all the mailed ballots, 26% were returned by eligible members and counted the Election Officer estimates that, at most, that same percentage would apply to the estimated 7,700 sent to local union or employer addresses. Thus, at most, only 2,010 such ballots would have been returned union-wide. Dividing that figure according to the percentage of ballots cast from each region yields the following allocation: 161 attributed to the Southern Region; 663 attributed to the Eastern Region; 382 attributed to the Western Region; 744 attributed to the Central Region and 60 attributed to Canada.[1] Based upon the returns and the margins achieved by the winning candidates these numbers could not have affected the outcome. The margins between the winning candidate receiving the least votes and the losing candidate receiving the most votes is as follows:
Joseph Padellaro
December 18, 1998
Page 1
Attributed Figure
for Employer or
Office Margin Local Union Addresses
General President 54,485 2,010
General Secretary-Treasurer 43,771 2,010
At-Large Vice President 41,730 2,010
Trustee 40,991 2,010
Southern Regional Vice-President 727 161
Eastern Regional Vice-President 19,018 663
Western Regional Vice-President 5,081 382
Canada Regional Vice-President 1,795 60
Therefore, even assuming that all ballots were cast for the losing candidates, and presuming that 2,010 ballots with employer or local union addresses were returned and not otherwise challenged or voided, those ballots could not have affected the outcome.
Accordingly, the protest is DENIED.
Any interested party not satisfied with this determination may request a hearing before the Election Appeals Master within three (3) days of receipt of this letter. The parties are reminded that, absent extraordinary circumstances, no party may rely upon evidence that was not presented to the Office of the Election Officer in any such appeal. Requests for a hearing shall be made in writing and shall be served on:
Kenneth Conboy, Esq.
Latham & Watkins
885 Third Avenue, Suite 1000
New York, NY 10022
Fax (212) 751-4864
Copies of the request for hearing must be served on the parties listed above as well as upon the Election Officer, 400 N. Capitol Street, Suite 855, Washington, D.C. 20001, Facsimile (202) 624-3525. A copy of the protest must accompany the request for a hearing.
Joseph Padellaro
December 18, 1998
Page 1
Sincerely,
Michael G. Cherkasky
Election Officer
cc: Kenneth Conboy, Election Appeals Master
[1] The Election Officer does not know for a fact that the numbers correlate with the regional returns, because the Election Officer is not able to identify each employer or local union address. It is reasonable, however, to infer that the distribution is about the same as the membership.