I Voted!

“A couple of my employees are asking about paid time off to go vote. Am I required to pay them to vote?”

Your HR Survival Tip

Any paid time off seems to generate misinformation. California does have a law regarding paid time for voting. However, most employees will not be eligible for this paid time off.

Many California counties have adopted the new Voter’s Choice Act, allowing people to cast their vote in person or by mail about a month before election day. Voting centers in those counties will be open for up to 11 days before election day, including weekends, so employees registered to vote there have no excuse for not having sufficient time to vote.

However, if you have employees who work really long hours, they may qualify for paid time off to vote. The rule is the employee should have 2 hours before or after work when they can go to a voting center. If their workday doesn’t leave 2 hours on either end, you may be required to offer up to 2 hours paid time. Of course, there are a few more things to this law:

• Since polling places are open 13 hours (7am to 8pm), you can avoid paying for voting time with a little forethought given to employee schedules.
• If an employee believes they will not have sufficient time to vote on election day, they must give you 2 days’ notice so you can try to rearrange their workday to allow time to vote.
• Time off to vote must be taken at the beginning or end of the workday to limit disruption to their work, unless another time is mutually agreed upon.

Employees may be registered to vote in a different county than where they work but the rules are basically the same. They can choose to mail in their ballot if it’s too far to go to a polling place.

Take time to review this with employees prior to election day so everyone knows their options for voting and they have time to do something else if voting in person isn’t a possibility. Also, make sure your “time off to vote” poster is posted at least 10 days prior to election day. If you have an employment law poster posted, it will be included on that.