Facebook giving paid time off to employees to staff 2020 US polls

San Francisco, Sep 13 (IANS) Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced to give additional paid time off to all employees at his company who volunteer as poll workers during the 2020 US presidential election in November.

Facebook has launched a poll worker recruitment drive, making it easy for people to sign up and serve as a poll worker with their state election authorities.

“We’re less than two months away from the US elections, and we are seeing a massive shortage of poll workers to staff voting stations,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post on Saturday.

It is estimated that almost half a million poll workers will be needed this year — especially due to the ongoing Covid pandemic.

To help attract more people for these critical jobs, Facebook will show a message at the top of News Feed to people in the US over the age of 18.

“We’ve also offered free ad credits to every state election authority so they can recruit poll workers across our platforms,: the Facebook CEO said.

“We’re also offering paid time off to all employees at Facebook in the US who want to volunteer to staff the polls”.

This recruitment drive is part of Facebook’s larger voting information campaign, with the goal to help four million people register and vote.

“Priscilla (Chen) and I have also personally donated $300 million to non-partisan organisations supporting states and local counties in strengthening our voting infrastructure,” Zuckerberg said.

If someone plans to serve as a poll worker, he or she can check out the poll worker section in the Voting Information Centre on Facebook.

–IANS

na/