DETROIT – Votes cast to determine the president of the United Auto Workers are in the process of being counted -- a process that is nearing its end as of Friday.
The race is between Ray Curry, current UAW president, and Shawn Fain, who holds a small lead as of Friday morning.
Fain is from a group known as UAW Members United, which challenged sitting President Curry in the first direct UAW election in 87 years. On Friday, March 17, Fain’s UAW Members United teamed up with a group called Unite All Workers for Democracy to post numbers from the election.
While the vote count is not official Friday, and is not expected to be for several days, the groups all but claimed Fain’s victory on Thursday night. With fewer than 600 challenged votes to review, Fain reportedly received 50.2% of the vote, while Curry received 49.8% of the vote -- a 505-vote difference.
“By now, the writing is on the wall: change is coming to the UAW,” Fain said in a statement Thursday. “Let’s count every vote and get to work on putting the membership back in the driver’s seat of our union. We’re pressing the Monitor to resolve the remaining challenged ballots as quickly as possible. You, the members, have already made history in this election, and we’re just getting started. It’s a new day in the UAW.”
The election process began last fall, and members have been mailing in their ballots. The process of counting the remaining ballots has been taking particularly long due to about 1,600 votes being challenged. Officials are hand counting the ballots, checking for signatures and verifying that the person casting their vote is a UAW member and is eligible to vote.
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