The George Floyd protests have garnered an impressive amount of support, not just from individuals but from a wide range of companies.
McDonald’s, for example, posted a video that said the victims of police brutality were, in every meaningful sense, the very people who staffed the chain’s restaurants, bought its food and ran its franchises.
Chick-fil-A, Nordstrom and United Parcel Service have made similar statements. A complete roster of companies that have done so would fill this column and then some.
But these expressions of support are often vague. One addition, so brief that it fits in a tweet, would make their commitment concrete.
It would read something like this: “Fixing racial inequities requires policy reform. That can happen only through voting. Our employees shouldn’t have to pay to vote. So we pledge that every one of them will get four hours of paid time off to go vote this year. #time4voting”
Pledging to provide time for voting (#time4voting, as I’m calling it) is a small step. You might argue for bigger ones, like increasing work force diversity or improving working conditions, and those are absolutely worthwhile goals.
But as a first step, #time4voting has many virtues. Namely, it cannot be dismissed as mere words — the dollars spent reveal preferences better than tweets sent. It also has the benefit of concreteness. Research is mixed on what interventions increase workplace diversity, so employers can hide behind that ambiguity. Paid time off is an unambiguous, single, simple step. It empowers employees to vote their minds, rather than allowing C.E.O.s to promote their own values.
Some companies have already taken a lead in helping their employees vote. In 2018, Levi Strauss offered all employees paid time off to vote, and the company says it will do so again this year. Patagonia closed its stores, offices and distribution centers in the United States on Election Day in 2016 and 2018, a practice it says it will continue.
Moreover, Levi Strauss and Patagonia, along with a few others, have recruited companies to follow their example under the banner “Time to Vote.” As part of that effort, 470 companies have pledged to take action to increase voter turnout. Corley Kenna, a spokeswoman for Patagonia, said most of these companies “are committed to give their U.S. workers — hourly and salary employees — some form of paid leave on Election Day.”
Research shows such efforts could make a difference. Numerous studies have found that voting, like other behaviors, responds to costs. “A Precinct Too Far: Turnout and Voting Costs,” by the economist Enrico Cantoni, is one such study. He found that a quarter-mile increase in distance from a polling booth reduced voting by 2 to 5 percent.
Paid time off would also offset the tax the United States currently charges people to vote. If you’re thinking that the 24th Amendment did away with poll taxes, your perception of taxes is too narrow. To an economist’s eye, the 24th Amendment eliminated only poll taxes levied in dollars. Today’s poll taxes are levied in time.
“Time is money” is not just a hackneyed aphorism. For most low-income people — a category that tragically overrepresents black Americans — it is a reality. Voting means lost time, and for a worker paid by the hour, or a gig worker paid by the task or ride, that means lost earnings.
A 2018 survey of corporate human resource managers found that 44 percent of their companies offered paid time off to vote. The data was for all employees, but these benefits are probably provided mostly to salaried workers, who often have the freedom to step out during the day even without such a benefit. Notably, Levi Strauss offers paid time to all its staff, including nonunion employees at its distribution centers as well as retail workers.
Recent research shows that black Americans are taxed more heavily than whites. To arrive at this conclusion, the economists Keith Chen, Kareem Haggag, Devin Pope and Ryne Rohla had to overcome a major hurdle. There is no systematic collection of data on time spent voting at polling stations, which is telling in itself. So in their paper, “Racial Disparities in Voting Wait Times,” they found a clever way to measure it.
Apps on cellphones routinely record location. By using a large anonymized data set, they could see how long people were stuck at a polling place. Such location data can be used for nefarious purposes, but when carefully anonymized and analyzed, it can do some good as well.
The researchers substantiated that voting, especially for black Americans, is not a quick duck into the voting booth on a lunch break. Residents in predominantly black neighborhoods waited 29 percent longer than those in white neighborhoods and were 74 percent more likely to spend more than 30 minutes simply waiting in line.
The data showed that if paid time off on election days were universal, voting would be easier even for people who didn’t take direct advantage of the benefit. That’s because polling places tend to be especially busy in the morning and the evening. If more workers could vote during the typical workday instead, lines would be shorter for everyone.
As economists would point out, paid time off for voting would increase overall efficiency as well as equity.
If the pandemic is still raging in November, many people will want to avoid polling booths entirely, opting for absentee ballots. Obtaining and completing one costs time — that process, too, is not as easy as it ought to be. And learning about candidates, especially in local elections where voters are not inundated with advertising, is also time consuming. In principle, these are things that workers could do in their free time, but that, too, is scarce for many low-income workers, and committed employers could extend paid time off to these activities as well, even earlier than Election Day.
During the primary elections in Georgia this week, drones captured striking videos of voters waiting in lines that snaked along seemingly forever.
Eliminating those lines — as well as the less obvious impediments to voting throughout the United States — is critical.
Companies can make a significant contribution if they give employees paid time for voting.
Sendhil Mullainathan is a professor of behavioral and computational science at the University of Chicago. Follow him on Twitter: @m_sendhil
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