Is “One Member, One Vote” Guaranteed for Future UAW Elections?
In 2021, UAW members voted overwhelmingly to adopt “one member, one vote” direct elections for our top officers.
Direct elections will stay in place for our 2026 IEB elections, but they’re not yet permanently protected in our Constitution. Learn what you can do to protect one member, one vote.
This article summarizes our December 7, 2025, webinar "We Won the Right to Vote. Let’s Protect It!".
In a 2021 referendum, UAW members voted overwhelmingly to adopt direct elections (“one member, one vote”) for International Executive Board (IEB) officers. This referendum — which ushered in our union’s first direct elections in 2022–2023 — was mandated and supervised by a court-appointed Monitor overseeing the UAW since 2021.
That Monitorship is scheduled to end in January 2027. As of now, once the Monitorship ends, so will independent supervision of our elections — election administration will fall to the IEB itself. On top of this, delegates at a future Constitutional Convention could vote to overturn direct elections altogether.
One member, one vote is ensured for this year’s elections, but it’s not yet permanently protected in our Constitution. Here’s what you can do to protect direct elections:
Sign the pledge to protect our vote. Candidates for delegate can make a commitment to uphold the referendum by signing, and members more broadly can sign to show visible, union-wide support for protecting direct elections.
Bring the Resolution to Protect UAW Members’ Right to Vote to your local and pass it up to the 2026 Convention.
Why direct elections matter
The IEB is the highest governing body of the UAW between Conventions. It controls hiring, spending, and has significant influence over our union’s direction — from contract negotiations and grievance handling to political activity to new organizing.
Most unions still elect top leaders indirectly through delegate systems. Of the 20 largest U.S. unions, only six use direct elections. Delegate systems produce fewer contested elections and less accountability, insulating top leaders from the membership and our priorities.
Direct elections don’t guarantee reform, but they do make leadership elections far less likely to be a rubber stamp.
How UAW members won direct elections
Under the old delegate system, the UAW experienced years of corruption and embezzlement. In 2019, federal prosecutors charged 12 former officials, including two former UAW presidents. The fallout led to a 2020 consent decree placing our union under an independent Monitor and giving members the right to decide how top officers are elected.
Reformers organized around this referendum and turned out thousands of voters in 2021. This referendum passed with 63% of voters supporting direct elections.
In the first one-member-one-vote elections in 2022–2023, every challenger to incumbent IEB officers won. Once elected, our new leadership took the most aggressive and transparent approach in negotiations our union has ever seen. This amount of change in such a short time would have been nearly impossible under the old system.
What’s at stake now
This fall’s IEB elections will still be supervised by the Monitor. But after 2027, election oversight could be controlled by the very officers being elected — a clear conflict of interest. And despite the membership’s vote, convention delegates could vote to return to the delegate system as soon as the 2029 elections.
That’s why the 2026 Constitutional Convention is critical. We can protect members’ right to vote by making clear in our Constitution that any change to our election system can be decided only by the membership — not by delegates alone.
What you can do to defend one member, one vote
First, you can sign the pledge to protect our vote. Candidates for delegate can make a commitment to uphold the referendum by signing, and members more broadly can sign to show visible, union-wide support for protecting direct elections.
The next step is to bring the Resolution to Protect UAW Members’ Right to Vote to your local and pass it up to the 2026 Convention.
The resolution would amend Article 10, Section 1 of the UAW Constitution to state:
“Any amendment to the mail vote of a secret ballot election method, selected by referendum vote of the entire UAW membership, shall be made only via secret ballot referendum vote of the entire UAW membership.”
Reach out to Member Action for help bringing this resolution to your local.
