Right after Tuesday night’s presidential debate ended, a new ad was aired featuring 1972 Democratic standard bearer George McGovern, who, until Barack Obama came along, was easily the most liberal presidential nominee ever. McGovern was a reliable Big Labor ally throughout his Senate career, but not now. In the TV ad, he blasted Obama’s “Card Check” proposal to abolish secret ballots in union representation elections in the workplace. Secret ballots must be preserved, he said, “because democracy is something that should never be sacrificed.”

Card check – aka the “Employee Free Choice Act” – would require all employees to pay union dues as soon as 50 percent of employees sign a petition (a “card”) demanding a union. Without secret ballots, everybody will know who didn’t sign the petition, which will likely subject them to union retaliation and intimidation. As McGovern wrote in a recent column in The Wall Street Journal, “There are many documented cases where workers have been pressured, harassed, tricked and intimidated into signing cards that have led to mandatory payment of dues.”