Election Day Is Coming: Do Employers Have to Pay Employees to Vote?

[00:00:10] Welcome back everyone to another great episode of The Human Roll. So I hope everyone had a great, fantastic summer and is kicking off Q4 in an amazing way. Naturally, we know that this is a time of year that is super busy, especially in our world, especially on the payroll side where, oh man, we've got W2s, end of the year bonuses, open enrollment always approaching, new plans, new hourly rates, everything.

[00:00:40] That can kick in from our specific season. So kudos to everyone out there sending all the best wishes, great vibes. So I really wanted to get into another great topic from our side. And the question is, hey, Election Day is coming up and do employers have to pay employees to vote? Right? So that is very, very critical. I ran into this many, many, many years ago, early, early on, and it is really an important topic, especially depending upon the state.

[00:01:11] As we know, I'm sure if you watch any of the news, whether you don't watch the news, it still comes to you. But Election Day is definitely approaching us and tons of us will be out there voting, right? And it's really important as an employer to know and be prepared to know if you are legally required to give your employees time off to vote. And if so, do you have the pay for that, right?

[00:01:37] And truly the answer is that it really just depends on where your employees work. And so we really want to get into those details because there is a big misconception when it comes from the federal side, federal law side.

[00:01:50] So there's no general federal law that requires private employers to provide pay time off to vote. So the leave voting requirements really are primarily focused on the state, right? They're governed by the specific state. So some states do require paid leave. Others really allow unpaid leave. And some don't mandate voting leave at all, right?

[00:02:15] So it really just depends on the states that you're in. And it's really critical that you keep up with that. And if there's a requirement to pay, if there's a requirement to post your voting leave laws, making sure that those are posted out everywhere for everybody to see. So that could be on an employee dashboard, that could be around the office. A couple of different areas that could be mass blast memo blasts, that could be in your handbooks and your policies.

[00:02:41] And if you're a multi-state employer, this could really be a challenge because it could depend on each specific state. And when it comes down to each specific state, do you want to just have one voting leave, you know, across the board for everybody? Or do you want to keep up with the different voting leave laws based on each state that you're in? And that's really obviously company dependent on what you all want to do.

[00:03:06] But, you know, I'd say path of least resistance to make sure you're just having a seamless process across the board and hopefully being accommodating in many ways to your employees. So I would say this, look, I think there's a couple of breakdowns for certain things to call out for certain states. So I think at this point we're talking about around 28 states that do require some form of voting leave for like the private sector employees, right?

[00:03:35] And some may not necessarily mean that you have to pay them, but you do want to at least allow employees up to a certain time frame. The common frequent time frame is typically up to two hours. So let's just say in, you know, Georgia, it is up to two hours. Is this paid or not? Definitely not paid.

[00:03:54] But we want to just make sure that we're taking into a factor of ensuring that employees have time outside of their normal schedule to make sure that they can work, right? So even in California, typically California, because they're really employee friendly when it comes to this, it can be as much time as needed. Solely only paid up to two hours.

[00:04:17] But that truly aligns only if they're able to vote within insufficient time outside of their work, right? So if based on their schedule, they are not able to get to the polls in a reasonable time frame. So say their schedule is from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and the polls are open from 8 to 5 and then they can't, you know, get to the polls in that time frame.

[00:04:43] Then you would want to allow them up to two hours paid time to vote. And then, of course, if they need more time, that just goes as unpaid. And then, you know, you can kind of set your policy from there if you want to allow them to use PTO. So I would say when it comes to whether or not they should use their PTO or not, I believe New York is a state that really does not want to allow to kind of like use the PTO. So you want to make sure that they are being allowed up to two paid hours if they're eligible.

[00:05:13] And so there's other requirements on like important distinctions between allowing that or not. You know, sometimes it's like, yes, you pay only up to two hours if you have received an advance notice from the employee population. And it's always kind of like arguably what is an advance notice, right? And so that's as an employer, you need to set those for your employees, right? Is an advance notice a couple of days in advance or a couple hours?

[00:05:41] You know, it just definitely I would say from an employee's stance, not a couple hours. At least give a 48-hour window if possible. But as we're approaching this season and time frame, I think it is good to send out mass memo notifications and kind of set the expectations for voting. My experience is that most people will attempt to vote at a reasonable time outside of work, right? They would either go early in the morning or they'll do early voting or they're mailing a ballot. But you do have those one-offs where people will just take any time to vote.

[00:06:11] And so you want to make sure for those who do come through and want to be essentially paid that you know the laws from your side and that you're taking that into a factor and that you also have your proper voting lease in place per state so that we're not kind of messing up schedules. And I understand there are some schedules where, I mean, people may work 24-hour shifts for across a couple of days, right?

[00:06:37] But you need coverage and it might be a tight time frame to get back up if an employee's away for two hours because that, you know, is a substantial time or potentially more depending on the lines. So you definitely want to let your employees know if they are needing to take time off based on their schedule that you do have enough notice to essentially get back up and accommodate them being out for some time. So, yeah, so we really want to just make sure we understand the specific state leave laws.

[00:07:06] I will have a link posted below in this post so that way you're able to click and see at least the current size. So this is year 2026. So if you're looking at this years down the line, things could, of course, change and laws per states could change. So just make sure you're keeping up with that per your state specific requirements when it comes to voting leaves.

[00:07:27] And, you know, from an employee stance, let's just make sure we're being respectful for our employer and we're giving them, you know, days notice if possible so that they're aware if you're going to be out. I do remember many, many, many years ago, a group of employees just, hey, they're going to walk out, they're going to vote. And, you know, they just left and their manager was like, wait, what happened? Technically, we did need to allow them to go vote.

[00:07:53] They did not give proper notice ahead of time, but it was kind of tough from our end as far as we didn't necessarily have things posted everywhere. Like there was there was statements listed in certain guides, but it definitely needed to be updated. Right. And so so, you know, we kind of made sure that go forward from a future stance that we did have all of that covered. But during this time frame, let's be kind. Voting is important.

[00:08:20] People are going to go out to vote and we just want to make sure that we are allowing that, but not having our employees take advantage of this law and making sure that they understand things properly. So, yes, there may be some states that require your employer to pay you up to two hours for you to go and vote. But that comes with other requirements. Did you give them a reasonable notice and time frame? Right.

[00:08:48] Did you at least attempt to look and vote and find a location to where you can vote outside of your work schedule? Right. Because that's another for some states, that's another requirement. If there were insufficient time frames outside of your normal schedule, then you get paid. But if there weren't and you just neglected that and didn't get up earlier, didn't go to the polls later after work, then things aren't being accommodated. So we want to just make sure we're being mindful of that. OK, so going through all the different types of scenarios that we could have.

[00:09:16] I mean, all of these play very important factors when it comes down to certain certain items. Right. And we want to make sure we are allowing employees time. And I would say also to like the freedom to vote, because that is really, really important. But, you know, we do have business from an employer, employer stance to the employees. Look, we are running a business. We can't just let everyone up and leave.

[00:09:42] And we do have a right as an employer to follow the state requirements. My suggestion to, you know, lots of employers is to do your best to maybe have a vote to leave requirement out there for your company and go through all your states. And I would say pick the state that might be the most reasonable for an employee.

[00:10:05] If your company can accommodate that across the board of like, yeah, we'll allow up to two hours of pay if you give us at least a 72 hour notice ahead of time. Or, yeah, just let us know what your your signed voting poll. Let us know what their time frames are. And if that won't accommodate your work schedule and if that's going to not be like a good fit for you to vote during that time frame, then, yeah, we'll let you off.

[00:10:31] Like definitely set some set the tone for that to avoid any backlash come voting day. Some people are fine with mailing in a ballot. Some people don't trust that. Some people are fine with doing early voting. This just goes a long way. You know, it goes a long way when you do that for your employees and show empathy and show that you care. So voting is truly, truly, truly a fundamental part of our democracy.

[00:10:55] When it comes to workplace obligations, however, you know, as an employer, we don't want to assume that truly one policy fits every single employee. Like kind of how I was mentioning, like, let's try to be flexible. So I would say whether you have a small population, maybe 100 or so employees or whether you have thousands of employees, you know, it's really important to understand all of your state voting leave laws and communicate properly.

[00:11:21] Right. And in advance, have proper communication and expectations in advance. And really, the election day should be a beautiful day. It shouldn't be the first time, you know, your HR and payroll team are having this conversation. So we want to just make sure we're properly aligned from there. But check out my link that has current legalese for now that has the details broken down per each state. And more than happy, you know, for you to kind of look in on your side.

[00:11:47] But I definitely would suggest if you don't have leave law like this when it comes to voting in place, definitely look into that. If you have not at this point, at least sent out notification to your employees on the voting leave laws. I would really, really encourage you to do that before voting day to avoid any issues from there. But yes, that's what I wanted to go over with you all today. So thank you so much for listening to this short but informative note from my end.

[00:12:17] And I will be back in another few weeks with another great episode. Bye.