Opinion: How to get a landslide victory...
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Craig Mazin, who in his Artful Writer blog and elsewhere has been a vociferous pro-strike voice among Writers Guild members, recounts a funny/creepy story about how the Guild managed to sap even his enthusiasm. Mazin, consciously or not, did the cost/benefit analysis and came to the only logical conclusion: that there is no period of time in your life that wouldn’t be better spent doing something other than voting. In other words, he didn’t bother to vote, but he was intending to do so before today’s deadline. Then he got an email from the WGA:
It was from a member who I shall not name. She’s my “strike captain.” And she told me that the Guild had informed her that I had not yet voted, and she urged me to vote. What… …the… ……hell???? For as long as I’ve been a member of this union (12 years and counting now), every single vote we’ve ever taken has been a secret ballot. No one knows who votes or who doesn’t vote, and no one shares that information with other members. Furthermore, there was absolutely no indication in the voting materials that this ballot would be handled in any different way than any ballots before it. Secret ballotting is, in my opinion, a fundamental requirement for a properly functioning democratic election.
As it happens, I disagree with this last point. Or at least, I reject anonymity where my own vote is concerned, have never been persuaded that a secret ballot is necessary for a legitimate vote and think the benefits of doing all votes openly are vastly greater than the costs. (I also believe that major media companies should require journalists, as a condition of employment, to make their own ballots public, which is, philosophically, pretty much the opposite of the way they do things now.)
However, the Writers Guild has a duty to its members to conduct its voting in a way that is clear to those members and consistent. Mazin posits a not-hard-to-imagine nightmare scenario in which enemies lists are drawn up of people who either didn’t vote or voted against authorization; I say if you have to fear retribution from your union because of something like that, you’ve got bigger problems than just the secrecy of your ballot, but then I’m not a big fan of unions. The point is that the members have a right to know how their votes are being treated, and legitimate reason to be concerned when their voiced or unvoiced opinions are being manipulated by the leadership in some kind of same-regiment-circling-the-block parade of fake support. That holds even truer for members like Mazin who actually share the goals of the leadership:
In principle, I support a high turnout, and I was absolutely intending to vote. And of all the members in the union, I’m probably one of a dozen who have taken a widely public stance in support of a “yes.” But now I’m not voting. I will not be coerced by my union to vote. Nor will I support any union election that violates the privilege of a secret ballot. If the staff is tallying who voted, then what’s stopping them from seeing who voted how?
So that’s one Yea vote lost. With so much apparent popular support for authorization, this kind of strongarm tactic by the WGA can only be seen as evidence for every producer’s secret suspicion that writers are dumb. Somehow I still think the final balloting will produce that big ol’ authorization. Take your pick: 90% or unaminous. Or better yet, let the WGA take your pick for you.