they refuse to accept our ballot results
sounds familiar refrain from another equally enlightened part of the world!
More seriously, I would have thought that a ballot would have to be done independent of either party (i.e.through say the electoral reform society) to get a result that could be accepted by all concerned. The ballot would surely have to be open to all possible eligible pilots (not sure of the cross border bit here) and can hardly be done by individual bases; how could STN be a "Balpa"base but EMA not for instance? I still refer to the six whingers amongst the 2000 which would seem to indicate a healthy majority for rejecting Balpa and more recently:-
What's "right" in my opinion is that people (a handful of pilots in this case) who are pro BALPA