There's no federal law requiring employers to give workers time off to vote, but 30 states and the District of Columbia have such laws, according to Deirdra Nguyen, an attorney with Littler in San Diego. The state laws vary in their details, but most of them provide two to four hours of leave, depending on the employee's work schedule.
"It requires a bit of foresight and advance thinking," said Richard Greenberg, an attorney with Jackson Lewis in New York City.
Sometimes, employers need to pay attention to exact voting hours in order to provide enough time for workers to get to the polling station and cast a ballot. For example, Arizona's law requires an employer to give an employee three hours of time off if there are less than three consecutive hours between the opening of polls and the beginning of the employee's regular shift, or between the end of the employee's regular shift and the closing of polls. Among the states, "there's no consistency in when polls close," Greenberg said.
For remote workers, be sure to comply with the law of the state where they are located. "If someone is working full-time remotely, you need to be aware of the law where they are working," Greenberg said.
Multistate employers need to decide whether to have a local strategy based on statewide rules or a national strategy for all workers. "There's a lot of variation here," Nguyen said.
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