Paid time off to vote?

If you couldn't take advantage of early voting in 2016, which is over, because of your schedule, you might want to make arrangements with your employer on Monday November 7, so you can vote during work hours on Tuesday. There are laws in Nevada that provide for the employer and employee and what happens on Election Day.

Nevada laws that impact employee voting during work hours go back to the 1950s. It was before early voting existed. Still, the laws are pertinent.

If your work schedule interferes with early voting, you can only vote during your work hours, you need to come to an agreement with your employers to cast your ballot at that time.

While early voting is convenient, sometimes we just can't take advantage of the times and dates.

If for some reason we find the only time we can vote is during our work hours, state law says the employee needs to make arrangements ahead of time with the employer.

“The law requires that if you are going to take time off to go vote, you need to make that request a day or so before the day you go vote,” says Shannon Pierce, an employment defense attorney.

Employees must be eligible to vote to request the time off to get to their polling place.

Where their polling place is will dictate how much time they can take off to vote.

In order to get paid for the time to vote, it must be impracticable for the employee to vote before or after his or her regular shift.

“The statute specifically says you cannot be disciplined for taking time off to vote. So firing people, disciplining them, giving them bad shifts, or something else because they went and took time to vote, is something that as a general rule should be avoided,” says Pierce.

While the laws are more than 50 years old, Pierce says there have really been no lawsuits challenging requests to vote during work hours, paid time to vote, or the amount of the time allotted to vote during the work schedule.