Here’s another entry for the Somebody Left The Irony On Department today. The SEIU held an election by mail for an internal election — for which it apparently uses the same kind of secret ballots that they want to deny workers with Card Check. By SEIU’s own rules, those ballots are supposed to arrive via US Postal Service, with postmarks to note the date so that the counters can verify they arrived before the deadline. One SEIU observer noticed counters opening large envelopes of ballots with no postmarks at all on them — and when she tried to protest, the other SEIU officials in the room pushed her out the door:

An SEIU member says she was physically forced out of a room after she questioned union leaders about how they were counting ballots, and she recorded the confrontation on her cell phone.

Mariam Nojiam, a state worker for the Department of Motor Vehicles, began recording video as she walked into an SEIU election office while officials were giving instructions on counting procedure.

After one of the officials giving instructions asked if there were any questions, Mariam said she spoke up and began asking about large envelopes she says didn’t have any postmarks on them.

“Some people sent them in today, some people sent them in yesterday and the day before in priority mail, and there’s no postmark on them,” the official responded.

The ballot instructions clearly state that ballots must be received at the election office through the U.S. Postal Service, but when Mariam tried to insist that the envelopes without postmarks shouldn’t be allowed, the official cut her off.

For a final irony, the SEIU’s spokesman insisted that Nojiam’s protest was irrelevant, because the rules state that a challenge has to come from one of the candidates. How’s that for convenient, eh? The union apparently has no problem breaking the rules to count batches of apparently invalid ballots, but when it comes to someone catching them at that game, the SEIU insists on full compliance with the rules on protests.

Perhaps irony isn’t a strong enough word here.

Union organizers want to tell us that a union-administered Card Check is somehow more reliable than an independently-administered secret ballot election process when it comes to organizing workplaces. I’d call this a great example of why it’s important to keep Card Check buried — and also why right-to-work legislation should pass in all 50 states. No worker should be forced to contribute to the system shown here.