Businesses in a majority of states have a legal duty to give workers time off to go to the polls next month, but the momentum for expanding voting leave laws has been limited, due partly to the pandemic-led growth of early and mail-in balloting.
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.
At the same time, a federal proposal to ensure workers have voting leave nationwide has stalled in Congress, where its sponsor said it’s still a priority for him but faces tough competition to get attention in the waning days of this congressional session.
The bill, H.R. 7489, hasn’t moved from the House committee where it was referred since it was introduced in April. Getting it attached to a larger legislative package could be one option for passage, said its lead sponsor, Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.).
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