When the National Labor Relations Board began calling out the votes Jan. 19 from the Los Angeles Times’ Jan. 4 election on whether to unionize, it seemed to be neck and neck, recalled Matt Pearce, a national reporter and union organizer at the Times. Then, the pro-union ballots started to pull away. At one point, 40 yeses in a row were read off, by the count of data journalist Anthony Pesce, also an organizer.