It’s that time again. The time where every citizen has the power to elect a new leader for this nation. Our votes will affect every aspect of our lives. Military and defense, healthcare, education, finances and wellbeing; you name it, your vote and mine will affect it. It feels unimportant, merely walking into the booth and interacting with a touchscreen, but each vote represents a unique opinion on how one believes the United States government ought to operate.
TEXAS STATE VOTING LAWS
Every state has their own set of rules on what employees are allowed to do on voting day. In Texas, it is State law under the Texas Election Code § 276.004 that an employee be given enough time to vote without any penalty if polls do not happen to remain open for a consecutive 2 hours outside that employee’s work day.
If you are an employer, whatever type of business you are in charge of, you are required to provide your employee(s) enough time to go vote if his schedule does not normally allow enough time to visit the voting booth after work. If you are an employee, this time off to go vote—assuming your schedule does not allow you to visit the polls within the aforementioned 2 hour window—is paid time. Additionally, advance notice to your employer is not required under Section 276.004.
POLITICS AT THE OFFICE
Also, employers, while discussing politics at the office is not a crime, retaliating—physically or monetarily—against your employee if he chooses not to reveal how he voted or if you find out he voted in a way opposite of your opinion is indeed a third-degree felony under Section 276.001.
VOTING: FUNDAMENTAL BEDROCKS OF OUR COUNTRY
So go out and go vote, it is one of the fundamental bedrocks of our country.
"Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting."
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945)
32nd President of the United States
"Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual—or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country."
Samuel Adams (1722-1803)
Father of the American Revolution