The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

Local News

October 31, 2008

Odd election law gives employees 3 hours to vote

Christian Giggenbach

It’s Election Day and the bossman needs you to pull a double shift, which means there’s no time to cast a vote for your favorite politician. Did you watch all those political ads for nothing?

Not necessarily so, if you invoke a seldom used or talked about state law that mandates employers give employees up to three hours on Election Day to vote without penalizing them or docking their pay.

That’s right. Three hours to vote on Election Day and you get paid for it.

Secretary of State elections manager Jason Williams was unsure what year the Legislature enacted the little known law, but believes the intent by lawmakers was to ensure that coal miners were not disenfranchised by any coal barons.

“From my understanding, the law was put on the books a relatively long time ago and it was one of those issues where coal miners were working long days and they weren’t always able to vote,” Williams said.

“But early voting has resolved a lot of those issues and the law was more important before early voting began in 2001.”

The law, which can be found on the new Web site run by the Secretary of State’s Office — wvvotes.com — says employees must be given “a period of not more than three hours, if necessary, between the closing of the polls ... without liability to any penalty or deduction from his usual salary or wages on account of such absence.”

The archaic law does state a three-day notice must be given by the employee prior to asking for the three-hour voting window.

The reason the law is less likely to be used today is because of the stipulation that an employee must prove he or she does not have three hours of his or her own free time in order to cast a ballot.

Early voting now begins up to two weeks prior to Election Day, making it tough for some to argue they could not find any time to vote.

“The law does remain on the books and can be used if for some reason you could not vote early,” Williams said.

“My experience is, however, that I’ve never heard of that affecting a voter or an employer or anyone ever calling our office to ask about that provision of the law. In fact, your the first person that has ever brought it up to me.”

Williams said as of Friday nearly 120,000 West Virginians had opted to cast early ballots.

— E-mail: cgiggenbach@

register-herald.com

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