What if you didn’t vote and it counted against you?

Election laws are again on the agenda at the state legislature. Imagine, if you will, that state election laws required you to vote every single time — no exceptions. And imagine that if you didn’t — for whatever reason — that would count as a “no” vote.

Sounds absurd, right?

Welcome to the world of Iowa’s public sector unions. And it’s been their world since 2017, when the newly-minted Republican trifecta rolled back Chapter 20 bargaining rights in a brazen attempt to do away with public sector unions.

But seven years on, 98% of public sector unions still exist. They organized and they voted — every single time — because it’s their only chance to have a seat at the table — to have any say in wages and schedules.

Fast forward to 2024. Union busting legislators went back to the drawing board and thought up an ingenious new idea: If an employer (a city, for example) fails to produce the required list of workers eligible to vote in a public sector union’s recertification election, that union must take them to court in an expedited proceeding or be decertified. Iowa’s District Court dockets are already full — they are understaffed and overworked.

As Sen. Bill Dotzler, D-Waterloo, pointed out during the Senate’s Workforce Committee debate last week, it’s like being robbed at gunpoint, then, as the victim, having to bring suit yourself even though the police caught the suspect.

Employers already hold almost all the cards. And now, if Senate File 2374 (formerly Senate Study Bill 3158) passes both houses and Gov. Kim Reynolds signs it into law, any public sector employers who operate in bad faith need only withhold the list and poof, the union associated with them will be decertified.

To return to our original premise: Imagine if you didn’t vote in the next election and that counted as a “no” vote. And imagine if the state mandated that anyone who didn’t print ballots could get off the hook if voters didn’t immediately take them to court. That’s what’s happening here.

Think it’s undemocratic? Tell your legislators. Write them, call them, show up at the Capitol if you are able — and call them to account. Unions help ensure that people earn a living wage — and we all know how important that is.

Oh, and you might want to vote this fall — after our Republican colleagues do away with secure drop boxes, move up the deadline for absentee voting and make you use a third envelope. Yep, they want to make it harder for you to vote, too — but at least if you don’t vote, it won’t (yet) count as a “no” vote. And so far, they’re still printing the ballots.

The authors are state Sens. Janice Weiner, D-Iowa City, Todd Taylor, D-Cedar Rapids, and Molly Donahue, D-Cedar Rapids.