We moved to a new city last year, and a few months ago, I voted in the presidential primary–my first election in my new hometown. Arriving at the local library to cast my vote, I was amazed at the openness of it all. After I got my ballot, I sat down at a long table full of other voters to mark my choices. Short of hunching over my paper, everyone around me could easily see who I was voting for. I’m used to private booths, or at least partitions, when I cast my votes.

Long explanation to say, it’s exactly the way NFIB/TN State Director Jim Brown explains the “Employee Free Choice Act,” a bill that passed the U.S. House last year and is awaiting a vote in the Senate. In his opinion piece in yesterday’s Tennessean newspaper, Brown describes the bill as an “attempt by organized labor to alter the workplace radically by seeking union recognition outside the long-protected secret-ballot election.

“Rather than hold an election, union representatives would need only to coerce a majority of employees to sign authorization cards. Once a union collects enough signed cards, the organizing drive would be over and the business would become unionized. All of this would occur either without the knowledge or involvement of the business owner,” Brown writes.

He goes on to explain that while unions won 54 percent of the elections held in 2007, they won 90 percent of the time when card checks were used.

NFIB has been a fierce opponent of this so-called card-check legislation. As the Democratic and Republican conventions get underway and campaign season gets into full swing, card checks are just one issue small business owners should consider when deciding who to vote for.