This weekend, the Denver Post provided an overview of the political efforts within Colorado to defeat the re-election of EFCA sponsor Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO).  According to the Post:

The possibility that Democrats could come close to controlling the 60 Senate seats necessary to pass the bill in 2009 has persuaded business groups and Republican allies to launch an aggressive counterattack, targeting Colorado, Oregon, Minnesota and Maine, all states where Senate seats are up for grabs.

The good news for opponents of EFCA is not necessarily that these efforts are underway, but rather that the proponents of the organized labor welfare bill do not appear to have formulated any better, more logical or honest arguments in its support.

Sen. Udall himself all but expressly acknowledges in the Post piece that this bill is less about individual workers' rights and more about political payback to institutional labor unions:

Udall said that although he's supportive of secret ballots in union elections, his vote for EFCA stems largely from the imbalance in the way that unions have been treated during the eight years of the Bush administration. National Labor Relations Board decisions have unfairly favored employers, he said, and under the current administration, instances of employer intimidation have risen.

"My whole support of this is based on the fact that the Bush administration and its policies haven't really been good for working people," said Udall, who has received more than $1 million from unions during his 10 years in Congress, according to OpenSecrets.org, more than any other sector.

"They haven't been maintaining what we as Americans all believe ought to be a relationship between labor and management that benefits both," he said.

Translation:  The Senator recongizes that individual workers deserve the protection of a secret ballot, but that doesn't leave his million-dollar donors powerful enough.

And the AFL-CIO is still peddling the same nonsensical sophistry that has lead to the EFCA's repeated defeat:

"Of course, employers are not happy about it," Ackerman said of the legislation. "Of course, employers are going to call it undemocratic.

"But, in fact, if people want to be members of the Republican Party, they don't have to have a secret-ballot election. If folks want to join a church or be a member of a Boys Club, they don't have to have a secret election," she said.

And Ms. Ackerman knows full well that similarly anyone that wants to be a "member" of a labor union doesn't have to have a secret election.  Any individual right now has the right to join any organization -- the Republican Party, a labor union, or a Boys Club.  Membership is not at all what EFCA is about.  EFCA is about exclusive union representation -- making it easy for an organization to force itself upon all of the individual employees in a workplace without allowing all of those individual employees have an educated, protected say in the matter. 

That may be why "of course" a lot of people call it "undemocratic."