What these 9 Philly tech companies are doing to help get out the vote

About a month ago, amid a particularly rough news cycle, Pam Selle, head of engineering for fully distributed tech company IOpipe, started to think of ways she could support civic engagement.

In keeping with the ethos behind 2016’s local Free the Vote initiative, the self-care enthusiast thought: Let’s make Election Day a company holiday.

“We decided it was a small (positive) step we could take as a company to encourage employees to vote, and to also give them well-deserved time off to do with what they will,” Selle said in an email. “With our company fully distributed (and with a healthy Philadelphia contingent), early voting or mail-in voting isn’t available to everyone in the company, so this is just one small thing we, as a company, can do.”

Like IOpipe, a smattering of local tech companies are taking similar steps to ensure their workers hit the polls this Tuesday when the national spotlight turns to the 2018 midterm elections.

• Think Company

Sure, the Center City/Conshohocken agency gave staffers time off to go vote, but developers at Think Company took that a step further and spend time building a web app that helps people in Pennsylvania find their polling place.

• MilkCrate

Per CEO Morgan Berman staffers can take off the time they need to go vote, but perhaps the bigger contribution to the company’s GOTV effort is the civic engagement app it built for Committee of Seventy, which looks to gamify the act of voting, and allows other companies to pledge time off for employees to go vote.

• Guru

Don’t expect Guru to put a label on the way it offered time off to its employees. They’re not about that life:

One of our core values at Guru is “We measure accomplishments, not hours worked." We've taken the last few weeks to remind everyone of that value, and encouraged them to do whatever they need to do (time off, work from home) to ensure they can vote.

— Guru_HQ (@Guru_HQ) October 31, 2018

• Sidecar

Offices at the Center City ecommerce company are closed until noon on Tuesday so people can go vote first thing in the morning. The firm also hosted a voter registration lunch last month.

• Elsevier 

Data analytics company had its Elsevier Connect UX Summit scheduled for Election Day. Attendees are encouraged to arrive late or leave early if need be so they can hit their polling place.

• Stitch

Need we say more:

Here @stitch_data, we encourage our team to do whatever makes it possible for them to vote – work from home, show up late, leave early, etc. We’re so into elections, a team member was even a Major Party candidate in 2016! https://t.co/EKVrxD5l6U

— Stitch Data (@stitch_data) October 31, 2018

• Power Home Remodeling

Delaware Country’s PHR employs 2,500 people around the country, so giving each of them two hours of flex time to go vote is no easy lift. Still, the company’s backing those two hours up with a social media campaign under the hashtag #PowerToThePolls.

• Curalate

Instructions from the company’s cofounder: “Do whatever it takes.”

Words from our co-founder @nshiftan @ our PHL-NYC-SEA All Hands: “I am very confident that the more that decisions in this country are made by Curalate employees, the better. So I implore you all to do whatever it takes to cast a vote next Tuesday.”✔️

— Curalate (@Curalate) November 2, 2018

Here are more local companies offering time off to go vote:

• Linode
• Picwell
• QuotaPath
• xtraCHEF
• IncentFit

Does your company also have a plan for Tuesday? Share this article and tell us what you’re up to.

(And, duh: Go vote tomorrow!)