“Some pretty serious words are being hurled in the race for U.S. Senate,” says WCCO’s Pat Kessler. Four-letter words like “liar” — and they’re being pinned by the Democrats on Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.

Here’s why: Coleman keeps insisting that the Employee Free Choice Act — “an Orwellian phrase,” he says — will do away with workers’ rights to “secret ballot” voting in union elections.

Kessler himself stated that the very same claim made in a pro-Coleman TV ad was a “distortion” that “misrepresents the legislation.” Kessler added, “The bill that Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken supports does not eliminate the secret ballot election.” (As MinnPost’s David Brauer notes, Kessler doesn’t reference his own earlier “Reality Check” that debunks the EFCA-abolishes-secret-ballots argument.)

That jives with what the pro-union American Rights at Work website — which used the L-word to describe the charge — and, more importantly, the House Committee on Labor and Education are saying. EFCA “does not abolish the National Labor Relations Board election process,” the congressional committee’s website says, calling claims that “secret ballot” votes would be abolished a “myth.”

But Coleman, on July 12,  explicitly stated that what EFCA is “about is taking away the right to secret ballot in a union election.”

So is “liar” one of the “pretty serious words” Kessler says are being flung — or as GOP chair Ron Carey says, “mudslinging” — or, you know, the truth?

DFL Video: “Norm Coleman Falsehood: EFCA Takes Away a Secret Ballot,” :39

Photo via The Raw Story.

Related: Coleman once supported union provision he (and a controversial ad) now decries;

Coleman perpetuates Cuba-China oil myth