NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD

146 THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
(E) CONDUCT OF THE ELECTION
The direction of elections issued by the Board leave the details
of the election procedure to be determined by the person who is
named as the Board's representative to conduct the election. 12 Ordinarily
each voter must personally cast his ballot in the presence of,
and at a place designated by, the representative of the Board. In
some instances, however, the Board has permitted voting by mail.
Thus, in Matter of Pacific Gas and Electric Company 18 and in Matter
of Pacific Greyhound Lines," the Board said :
We expressly authorize the use of the United States mail for such purposes
and the use of agents, if feasible, to journey through the Company's various
territorial divisions to conduct elections at appropriate places, collecting the
votes in sealed envelopes for delivery to the Regional Director.
In Matter of United Press Associations,' 5 the terms and conditions
of the election were agreed upon in stipulations entered into by the
parties, and the secret ballot was conducted through the mails and
by cablegrams To be acceptable, all returned ballots had to show a
postmark of not later than midnight of a given date.16
In Matter of Charles Cushman Shoe Company,' 7 the Board's direction
provided f9r elections to be conducted among those persons in
the appropriate unit employed as of March 24, 1937. In regard to
an objection to the elections which had been conducted the Board
said :
Persons were permitted to vote in an election by signing affidavits to the
effect that they were employed by the particular company involved in such
election on March 24, 1937. The objection is made that voting lists against
which to check the voters should have been provided by the Board and that the
carrying out of the elections by means of affidavits violated the Direction for
Elections issued by the Board and was injurious to the parties involved. The
Direction for Elections authorized the Regional Director to conduct elections by
secret ballot in accordance with Article III, Section 9, of National Labor Relaballots
cast they should be disregarded in tabulating the effective vote. Under such an
arrangement these ballots would merely have filled the role of indicating to the Board that
less than a majority of those voting do not desire to be represented by either labor organization.
The wishes of this minority should then properly be held ineffective to prevent a
choice of representative by the majority of the employees who desire representation by one
of the contending agencies.
"If a majority of those casting ballots should mark their ballots in the 'or by neither'
space, no representatives should be certified. Otherwise, the choice of a majority of
employees voting in favor of representation by one of the rival organizations should be
declared to be the representative of all.
'The purpose of an election under the Act is to allay an existing controversy over representation.
The heart of that controversy in the case before us is the wishes of the active
partisans for either of the candidates. It has already happened in the Board's experience
with the use of the 'or by neither' place on the ballot that a minority of a very few ballots
so marked can destroy the bargaining choice of a large majority of the employees who
have voted for either one or the other contending labor organization. To permit the continuance
of a device which can produce such illogical results seems to me entirely gratuitous,
particularly when it does not appear to be required either by the purposes or the wording
of the Act."
12 See Matter of Woodside Cotton Mills Company and Textile Workers Organizing Committee,
7 N. L. R. B. 960, in which the Board stated : "The parties also agreed that the
election should be held on a day when the mill is in operation (at the present time, the
mill operates only on Monday and Tuesday and is closed the balance Of the week), at the
Woodside Grade School, which is in the vicinity of the mill, and that voting should take
place from 11 a. m. to 8 p. m. This is a matter within the discretion of the Regional
Director in his conduct of the election, but we see no objection to the holding of the election
at the time and place agreed upon by the parties."
2-3 Matter of Pact/to Gas and Electric) Company and United Electrical .1 Radio Workers
of America, 3 N. L. R. B. 835.
14 Matter of Pacific Greyhound Lines and Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen,
4 N. L. R. B. 520.
16 Matter of United Press Associations and American Newspaper Guild, 3 N. L. R. B. 344.
16 The Board has also been faced with serious difficulties in conducting elections involving
maritime workers. For a discussion of the practices followed in these cases, see Second
Annual Report, pp. 111-113.
"Matter of Charles Cushman Shoe Company, et al. and United Shoe Workers of America,
2 N. L. It. B. 1015.