Employer Obligations for Employee Voting Leave

Election day is fast approaching on Tuesday, November 8; in many instances, the election results crystal ball remains largely hazy about which parties will gain control over each chamber of Congress, state houses, and governors’ mansions across the country. What isn’t undefined, however, are the various state statutes governing employer requirements for employee voting leave. 

No federal law requires employers to give their employees time off to vote, much less paid time off. However, twenty-nine states plus the District of Columbia require employers to ensure workers have time off to vote on Election Day, and all but seven of those require that it be paid. That list of state mandates is largely unchanged in recent years, with the exceptions of the unpaid voting leave requirement Connecticut enacted in 2021 and Hawaii’s elimination of its voting leave law in 2019 when lawmakers created a statewide vote-by-mail system. 

The legal requirements vary in states with voting leave laws. These laws often dictate that employers must provide between two to four hours of leave. In some states, that mandate applies only if the worker does not have an adequate block of time before or after work while polls are open. Other states leave it up to employers to determine what constitutes a “reasonable amount of time to vote.” Critical areas to watch among employee voting leave laws include employee advance notification of request for leave, notice to employees of their voting leave rights, mandatory time-off-to-vote posters, required proof of voting rules, election worker leave rights, and others.

Increasingly, businesses are also pledging that they’ll provide their workers with voting leave, either paid or unpaid.The Time to Vote campaign got 480 companies to make the pledge in 2018, the campaign’s first year. The list grew to 1,000 companies in 2020 and has surpassed 2,000 companies in 2022.

Helpful guidance on employee voting leave laws can be found here and here. 

Have questions about state employee voting leave laws, contact Amanda Anderson.