After losing in her bid for the Presidency of GFT, Carol Somerfleck filed multiple election protests with the AFT which rejected her claims as meritless.  Ms. Somerfleck then filed her protest with the US Department of Labor which did an extensive investigation into Ms. Somerfleck’s dozens of allegations and eventually they did find a problem:  The election committee left out the word “or” in the election notice to members.  “By entering into this agreement, GFT does not admit to any intentional violation of the LMRDA but recognizes that omissions in the phrasing of the election notice resulted in members at seven sites, listed in the notice as polling sites, not being informed of the alternative of voting at the GFT office when volunteer pollsters did not appear to open those polls”.  Even though the language in the mailer seemed clear enough to us (click here to see the election mailer) and to the AFT, our lawyers convinced us that a judge may or may not see it that way.   This issue has already cost the GFT, AFT and DOL $100,000s so after long discussions with DOL, GFT agreed to conduct a new runoff election for the Presidency before May 15th 2012. Click here to read the agreement between GFT and DOL