OPM Final Rule Bars Administrative Leave for Federal Employees Serving as Poll Workers

The Office of Personnel Management has written a ban on paid administrative leave for federal employees who serve as poll workers or poll observers into federal regulation. The final rule was published on October 19, 2026, and takes effect November 18.

That is two weeks after the November 3 midterms. For this election, federal employees who want to staff a polling place work under OPM’s current policy, which already says no. Since July 2025 OPM’s template for agency leave policies has barred administrative leave for poll work, “whether that service is partisan or nonpartisan, paid or unpaid.” Employees can still use annual leave, compensatory time, credit hours, a schedule change or leave without pay. The rule moves that position from guidance into regulation, which takes another rulemaking to undo.

What came before

For most of the past few years the policy ran the other way. In March 2021 President Biden signed Executive Order 14019, “Promoting Access to Voting,” which told OPM to look at more time off for voting and for nonpartisan poll workers. On March 24, 2022, OPM announced that federal employees could get up to four hours of administrative leave to vote, on election day or during early voting, and up to four hours a year to serve as nonpartisan poll workers or observers.

President Trump revoked Executive Order 14019 on January 20, 2025, in Executive Order 14148, his first list of rescinded orders. OPM’s July 30, 2025 template followed. It kept leave for voting, limited to employees who would otherwise have no reasonable opportunity to vote on a regular election day, and said that leave should generally not exceed three hours. It dropped poll work.

In the final rule OPM acknowledges that the ban changes its earlier policy. Its reasoning is that administrative leave “should be limited to the purpose of ensuring employees a reasonable opportunity to vote,” and that confining it to voting spares agencies from judging whether a given kind of election service is partisan. It describes the 2022 policy as a departure from the government’s practice before 2020, which covered voting only. OPM received 30 comments on the June 29 proposal, including from two unions and three employee advocacy groups, and changed nothing on this point.

The rest of the rule

Poll work is the most visible change. Most of the rule is about the workforce cuts of the past two years.

Administrative leave is governed by the Administrative Leave Act of 2016 and the rules OPM issued under it in December 2024. The new rule adds workforce realignment, including deferred resignation programs, to the list of acceptable uses. It bars administrative leave for anything sick leave could cover, with narrow exceptions, and for periods when investigative leave applies. And it states that decisions to provide administrative leave are in an agency’s “sole and exclusive discretion,” a phrase the rule now defines. That discretion stays within law, regulation and presidential directives. It can’t be limited or conditioned by agreement, which rules out union contracts that turn administrative leave into an entitlement.

Two changes reach outside the leave rules. Under 5 CFR 351.806, employees who get a layoff notice remain on duty “under ordinary circumstances,” replacing the older “when possible,” and agencies may put them on administrative leave for all or part of the notice period. Under 5 CFR 715.202, an agency has sole and exclusive discretion to accept or refuse an employee’s request to withdraw a resignation before it takes effect. Having taken deferred resignation benefits, such as months of paid leave, is now a valid reason to refuse.

That provision speaks to employees who signed up for deferred resignation in 2025, collected paid leave and then asked to stay. Agencies can now turn them down on that ground alone, though OPM says the rule doesn’t bar every withdrawal and agencies may still accept one. OPM’s companion layoff rules that rank performance ahead of seniority took effect in September.

One addition came from the comments. Agencies may now give limited administrative leave for approved physical fitness activities on a conditional basis.

Who staffs the polls

Election administration in the United States runs on temporary local workers, recruited by counties and cities for each election. Federal employees have been one source, and the 2022 policy was meant to make that easier. Counties are already absorbing cuts to federal election security support this year.

OPM’s case is that paid time off should go to voting, which every employee can do, and not to an activity agencies would have to police for partisanship. The case for the 2022 policy was that four hours a year was a cheap way to help local offices fill shifts. The rule doesn’t stop any federal employee from serving. It means the hours come out of the employee’s own leave.