Beyond the Ballot: What the 2026 Election Could Mean for Your Workplace

As a member of the Greater Cincinnati Human Rights Campaign and Chair of the Workplace Equality Committee, political action has been a priority. On November 3, Americans will vote for members of Congress, governors, state legislators and thousands of other elected officials. In several states, voters will also decide ballot measures involving reproductive freedom, LGBTQ+ rights, including issues specifically affecting transgender people, racial equity, collective bargaining, voting requirements and other issues with implications for equality and inclusion.

For those of us working in HR and DEI, there is another question worth asking:

What happens at work on November 4?

Election results don’t remain inside voting booths. A change in law can affect employee benefits, healthcare access or employment practices. It can create new compliance questions. It can influence whether employees are willing to live or work in a particular state. And highly publicized debates about identity and civil rights can affect workplace relationships and employees’ sense of belonging even when a law doesn’t directly regulate their employer.

Understanding those implications isn’t about telling employees how to vote. It’s about recognizing that public policy and workplace inclusion don’t exist in separate worlds.

When Healthcare Laws Follow Employees to Work

Reproductive-health policy provides one of the clearest examples.

Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision returned abortion regulation largely to the states, employers operating nationally have faced dramatically different legal environments depending on where employees live.

For healthcare organizations, those differences can be immediate. Physicians, nurses, hospitals, attorneys and risk-management teams may need to determine when particular care is legally permitted.

For other employers, the questions may involve benefits. Does the company’s health plan cover the care an employee needs? What happens if that care is unavailable where the employee lives? Does the organization provide travel benefits? What leave is available? How is employee medical privacy protected?

There is another consequence that is harder to measure:

Uncertainty can change behavior.

When the consequences of interpreting a law incorrectly are significant, people and organizations may become more cautious while courts, regulators and attorneys determine exactly where the boundaries lie.

Healthcare has provided visible examples of disputes about when physicians may legally intervene in pregnancy emergencies, including miscarriages and other serious complications. Even when an exception exists on paper, healthcare professionals and institutions still have to determine whether a particular patient’s circumstances satisfy it.

That distinction matters well beyond reproductive healthcare. A law doesn’t have to explicitly tell an organization not to do something to affect what the organization ultimately decides to do.

LGBTQ+ Policy Can Become a Talent Issue

The same principle applies to LGBTQ+ issues.

A law governing transgender students’ participation in school athletics, for example, doesn’t regulate most private employers. But imagine an employee with a transgender child considering a transfer to that state. The issue suddenly looks different.

Employees don’t make relocation decisions based solely on salary and job title. They consider schools, healthcare, housing, safety, their spouse or partner’s opportunities, and whether their family can build a life in that community.

That creates questions for employers recruiting nationally.

What happens when your ideal candidate says, “I love the job, but I’m not willing to move my family there?”

Or when an existing employee declines a promotion because it requires relocation?

Those aren’t abstract political questions anymore. They are talent questions.

For LGBTQ+ employees and employees with LGBTQ+ family members, laws affecting marriage, healthcare, schools, gender identity and other civil rights may be part of how they evaluate whether a community is somewhere they can live openly and safely.

Organizations don’t have to wait until those concerns appear in an exit interview to recognize them as potential recruiting, retention and mobility issues.

When DEI Itself is on the Ballot

Arizona’s Proposition 142 brings the connection even closer to the DEI profession. The measure addresses race- and ethnicity-based preferential treatment and certain DEI-related practices within public entities and public education.

The most direct consequences would fall on government agencies, public colleges and universities, schools and potentially organizations interacting with state government.

But it raises a larger question DEI professionals have increasingly confronted:

Which tools can organizations legally use to pursue fairness and inclusion?

Over the last several years, many organizations have reviewed hiring programs, internships, scholarships, employee-resource groups, training, supplier-diversity efforts and other programs in response to a rapidly changing legal environment.

The challenge isn’t necessarily whether an organization still believes in creating an inclusive workplace. It may be determining how to translate that commitment into practices that are both effective and legally compliant.

For multistate employers, that becomes even more complicated when laws differ significantly from one state to another.

Voting Access Is an Inclusion Issue

There is another category of ballot measure DEI professionals should watch: measures governing access to voting itself.

States including Arizona, California, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio have voting-related measures before voters this year.

In Ohio, where I live, State Issue 3 would place photo-identification for voting into the state constitution. Reading about an issue on a ballot is one thing. Thinking about what it takes for an actual person to meet the voting requirements is another.

Voting requirements don’t affect everyone in exactly the same way.

An employee who drives, has a current driver’s license, works predictable hours and lives close to a polling location may experience Election Day very differently from someone who relies on public transportation, works an inflexible shift, has recently moved, lacks the required identification or encounters questions because their appearance or gender presentation doesn’t match an identification document.

For transgender and nonbinary voters in particular, identification requirements can create additional concerns when a voter’s name, photograph, gender marker or gender expression doesn’t align neatly across documents. HRC’s 2026 voting resources specifically address these concerns and provide information to help transgender voters understand their rights.

Employers don’t administer elections, and supporting civic participation doesn’t require telling employees how to vote.

But organizations can ask practical inclusion questions.

Do employees know when and where they can vote? Do managers understand the organization’s Election Day policies? Do employees know whether they are entitled to time away from work? Are voter-education materials accurate for the state where each employee lives? Could work schedules themselves create barriers to participation?

Removing unnecessary barriers to civic participation is another way organizations can think about inclusion beyond the walls of the workplace.

The Election Will Come to Work

There is also an impact no statute can fully capture. People are going to talk about the election.

Some employees will be thrilled with the results. Others will be disappointed, angry, anxious, or worried about what happens next. Some will want to debate what happened. Others will want absolutely nothing to do with political conversations at work.

An inclusive workplace doesn’t require everyone to share the same political beliefs. But disagreeing about a ballot measure is different from demeaning a colleague whose identity is affected by it.

Leaders should also be careful about assuming everyone experiences an election result the same way. A manager celebrating an outcome in a staff meeting may experience that moment very differently from an employee who believes the same result could affect their marriage, healthcare, child or legal protections.

The goal isn’t to eliminate disagreement. It’s to maintain a workplace where disagreement doesn’t become exclusion.

Know What’s on Your Ballot

No article can adequately capture every race, candidate and ballot measure across the country. And with litigation, court decisions and other developments continuing through election season, information can change.

Fortunately, we don’t need to create another voter guide.

The Human Rights Campaign’s Voting Center Hub: Midterms 2026 provides resources to help voters prepare for Election Day, including voter-registration deadlines, voter-ID requirements, absentee and mail-in ballot deadlines, sample-ballot information, voting-rights resources and guidance specifically for transgender and student voters.

The HRC Foundation also offers a Civic Engagement Guide for LGBTQ+ Communities, including information about voting rights, identification concerns, transgender and nonbinary voters, racial profiling and immigration-related concerns, language access and what to do if problems arise at the polls.

HRC Voter Education Hub:
hrc.im/voterhub26

HRC Voting Center:
hrc.org/vote

Use these resources to understand what’s on your ballot, learn about issues affecting equality, understand voting requirements where you live and make a plan to participate.

Beyond the Ballot

The role of HR and DEI professionals is to understand what may change after the election.

Some election outcomes will directly change laws. Others will primarily affect employees outside work. Some may lead to litigation before their practical effect becomes clear. And some may create uncertainty that organizations must manage long before courts or regulators provide definitive answers.

So perhaps the most useful question for workplace leaders on November 4 won’t be:

“Who won?”

It will be:

“What does this mean for our employees, our workplace, and our ability to create an environment where people can do their best work?” Because, regardless of how we voted on November 3, we still have to work together on November 4.

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To dive deeper into this topic, join us on Thursday, October 15, for our “Beyond the Ballot” Virtual Learning Lab with Mary McFarland.

Register here.