What about when an employer of 20,000 people says: “Vote for my guy, because if the other guy wins, I’ll have to fire all of you.” If only 5% of the employees collectively think: “we’d better vote like our employer wants, to mitigate the risk of getting fired,” that could sway a close election. I don’t see how the secret ballot does anything about that sort of intimidation.
Free speech can sometimes convince people to vote certain ways. Why is that surprising?
It may say so, but it is weaselly misinformation. Before CU, there was no specific ban on companies suggesting to their employees how to vote. It was a general ban on companies endorsing or campaigning for political candidates.
Define “foisting” the opinion vs. “communicating” it.
What’s “intimidation” to you is “communicating the state of the business and its direction” to others.
As might the Republicans on the FEC (but not the Democrats).
Because, given the nature of the employer/employee relationship, this treads uncomfortably close to “Vote for my guy or I’ll punch you in the face.”
I suppose it comes down to whether you believe the employers really will fire their employees if the wrong guy gets elected. I tend to be quite skeptical of those claims; I suspect most such employers have no plans to fire people, but simply hope that their threats increase the chances that they get a president whose policies ultimately allow for fatter executive bonuses.
I’d pretend to be indecisive. 
My recollection on this is imperfect, but from what I remember being told, you had the ballot for one party on the left side and the ballot with all the other party’s candidates on the other side. They could tell by seeing the direction of the string going left or right which party you went for. I’m sure there was more to it than that. It sounds odd having whole individual ballots one for each party. But I’m guesing if you flat out didn’t vote for the approved party even by saying you couldn’t decide and so didn’t vote at all, then you’d be canned.
If you don’t give me your lunch money I’m afraid I may have to punch you in the face.
Intimidation or just “communicated the state of our negotiation and its direction”?
In the end there isn’t much you can do about this without infringing on political speech more broadly than I’d be comfortable. But pretending it’s not intimidation is silly, IMO (just like pretending union campaigning doesn’t sometimes involve intimidation is also silly).
I mean, turn your pen left then right then left then right… 
Vote while “deciding” and they will not know who you voted for, exit the poll with a confused look on your face and you’ll be golden.
If there is no way to find out whether you got the lunch money or not, that threat has no meaning.
OK, let’s tighten the analogy.
“If I don’t get $5 bucks total from all 10 of you nerds slipped into my locker I will beat up all of you”.
Let’s tighten the analogy even more:
“If I don’t get $5 bucks total from all 10 of you nerds slipped into my locker, I won’t be buying pizza for everyone at the poker game”.
Hm, that’s more of a loosening, to my way of thinking. Employment is not really analogous to a group donation to buy pizza. Getting fired at least has something in common with getting beat up.
And voting is not really analogous to giving someone money.
But I thought there were 47% of voters who only vote so the government will give them money? 
Look, I agree that this activity probably shouldn’t be illegal. But it is, IMO, highly unethical. We can play around with analogous situations all day (and I’m happy to… how about “If I’m not elected homecoming king I’ll kick you all off the chess team (which I’m somehow president of…)”?)
Better still: if I don’t get $5 from everyone to buy a TV for my summer home I will cancel the poker game.
LOL talk about an unrealistic scenario 
A member of my household is in the teacher’s union in Nevada. I can confirm that unions do indeed distribute literature announcing which candidates they support, making arguments against the opposing candidates, and predicting financial hardship (or lost jobs) if the other guy wins.
I can also confirm that Wynn’s literature is pretty much the same thing. It does not differ in tone or content from the teacher’s union stuff, does not take a threatening tone, but rather predicts that the “wrong” candidate being elected will screw things up and create a financial hardship for you. I’ve seen the Wynn voter pamphlet, and it does not differ from the union literature in any significant way other than which name gets placed in the good or bad category.