UPDATE: It's a shame that 75's proponents can't use any of the argumentative tactics or rhetorical devices that are available to its opponents. After all, if it weren't for the fact that the unions' contributions go by default toward the Democratic side of things, a Democrat governor could have proposed this very same bill and couched it as being all about workers' rights to control their political voices without fear of retribution.

Under an opt-out system, as it is now, the unions don't have to sell the idea of using member dues for campaign contributions to the workers whose money they're using. They don't even have to make it very clear to them that they can opt-out. There's no incentive for them to do so—quite the contrary. And if they sent everyone a mailing with a detachable form with a check-box on it and a signature line, saying, "Please check here and sign here and return the card if you don't want us using your money to contribute to the candidates we like"—it's easy to see why a worker wouldn't want to do so, even if he strenuously disagreed with who or what the union was endorsing. Those little signed cards become an instant dossier of union members who aren't "team players"; if the union in question has even the slightest bullying tendency, it could then go right down the handy list and make life very difficult for everyone who signed his name. And even if they weren't inclined to be so "gangland", the signed cards or the mailings could always be "mysteriously lost". Who's to say the person sent in the opt-out card? The union never received it. Funny, that.

But if the system is changed to opt-in, then the union has to advertise. It has to make sure those mailings get to the members. It has to make sure the members are sold on the candidates or propositions it wants to spend their money on. It has to convince members to let them use that money. And if a signed and checked-off card is "mysteriously lost", why, that's the worker's prerogative, not the union's. A worker who doesn't want to opt-in, and who doesn't want to be identified as a dissenter in the ranks, can exercise that right by simply throwing out the mailing. Who's to say he ever received it? Funny, that.

The unions currently opposing the proposition (using, naturally, all their members' money, as under current rules they can) can't argue from the standpoint of "protecting workers' voices" or "preventing union bullying". Those perspectives aren't on their side. But neither is it on the side of a Republican governor, who nobody would believe would have introduced the proposition for those reasons alone. So they have to go with the "Arnie's shutting you up" angle, and the "We're all going to get our arms chopped off by unsafe power tools and we won't have any health insurance to pay for it" angle. Which are powerful, but disingenuous.

All it'll "shut up" are the people who agree with their unions only by default or against their will. And is that such a terrible thing? For anyone except the union leaders, I mean?