The Department permits the following regarding administrative leave and voting:

Consistent with Executive Order 14148 of January 20, 2025, OPM has rescinded two previous Biden Administration guidance memoranda, “Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting” (CPM 2022-05, March 24, 2022) and “Access to Voting” (CPM 2024-18, August 29, 2024), which significantly departed from longstanding policy. Thus, agencies should return to the longstanding practice before the Biden Administration, under which the Secretary (or his or her designee) has discretion to grant administrative leave for voting in limited circumstances in which there is no reasonable opportunity for an employee to vote outside of their regular work hours, and only to the extent that such time off does not interfere with agency operations.

Such administrative leave should generally be limited to the hours required to vote and should generally not exceed three hours in length. In addition, agencies should grant administrative leave for early voting on a scheduled workday only when (1) the employee will be unable to vote on the day of the election because of activities directly related to the agency’s mission (such as Temporary Duty (TDY) travel) and cannot vote by absentee ballot or by early voting on a non-workday, or (2) early voting hours are the same as, or exceed, voting hours on the day of the election. 

Employees should use code “66 – Voting” when coding their timesheet.

Updated June 2025.