Cleveland is giving many city employees half the day off on Election Day.
City Council on Monday night passed legislation backed by Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration to make Election Day an official city holiday for full-time workers. Many employees will be able to take four hours off that day.
Non-union employees, who make up about a quarter of Cleveland’s 7,300-person full- and part-time workforce, will be immediately eligible for the holiday. City Hall will have to negotiate the benefit into collective bargaining agreements for unionized workers. As with any holiday, certain essential city employees – such as police officers – may still be scheduled to work.
The administration is also considering closing City Hall the afternoon of Nov. 5, according to Austin Davis, the mayor’s senior policy advisor. Davis said the new time off policy is meant to emphasize the importance of Election Day.
“The idea is to not just enable people to vote, although that’s a big part of it, but to draw attention to the election itself, to the cornerstone of our democracy,” he said.
Erika Anthony, who leads the nonpartisan voting advocacy nonprofit Cleveland Votes, said she hopes other workplaces follow suit. Cleveland city government was the 14th largest employer in Northeast Ohio last year, according to a list maintained by Crain’s Cleveland Business.
“If our local government, our city government, not only makes a pledge but codifies it into law, I think that sets a really great tone for the community at large,” she said.
The day doesn’t just have to be about voting, Anthony said. Employees could use their time off to serve as poll workers, for instance.
Council Member Jenny Spencer, who worked with the administration on the idea, said at a finance committee hearing Monday that she hopes the city’s move garners notice.
The city “is taking a lead in saying we want to lift up our employees and make sure that they have every access they can to the ballot box,” she said.
🗳️For more on this year’s November election, visit our Election Signals 2024 page.
Busy schedules a leading reason for not voting
Scheduling conflicts were the top reason that registered voters skipped out on Election Day, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released this year. The survey found that 26.5% of registered nonvoters listed “too busy / conflicting schedule” as their reason for not casting ballots in the 2022 midterms.
Other cities and states have already given workers time off to vote, Davis said. Sandusky replaced Columbus Day with Election Day as a paid holiday in 2019. Indianapolis includes the primary and general election days on its list of city holidays.
City Hall this year has been sharing information about voting and voter registration through an initiative it calls “Land the Vote.” Cleveland employees do not just live in the city proper. Many also live – and therefore would vote – in the suburbs.
Although Cleveland workers would be able to take time off on Election Day, they don’t have to cast ballots.
“This legislation is in no way to be construed to coerce employees to vote at all or to vote in a particular way,” Human Resources Director Matthew Cole wrote in a letter to Council President Blaine Griffin requesting the legislation’s passage.
