5 USC § 1502 - Influencing elections; taking part in political campaigns; prohibitions; exceptions

(a) A State or local officer or employee may not—

(1) use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election or a nomination for office;

(2) directly or indirectly coerce, attempt to coerce, command, or advise a State or local officer or employee to pay, lend, or contribute anything of value to a party, committee, organization, agency, or person for political purposes; or

(3) be a candidate for elective office.

(b) A State or local officer or employee retains the right to vote as he chooses and to express his opinions on political subjects and candidates.

(c) Subsection (a)(3) of this section does not apply to—

(1) the Governor or Lieutenant Governor of a State or an individual authorized by law to act as Governor;

(2) the mayor of a city;

(3) a duly elected head of an executive department of a State or municipality who is not classified under a State or municipal merit or civil-service system; or

(4) an individual holding elective office.

Source

(Pub. L. 89–554, Sept. 6, 1966, 80 Stat. 404; Pub. L. 93–443, title IV, § 401(a),Oct. 15, 1974, 88 Stat. 1290.)

Historical and Revision Notes
Derivation	U.S. Code	Revised Statutes and Statutes at Large
	5 U.S.C. 118k(a) (less 1st 41 words).	July 19, 1940, ch. 640, § 4 “Sec. 12(a) (less 1st 41 words)”, 54 Stat. 767.

In subsection (a), the term “State or local officer or employee”, defined in section 1501, is substituted for the first 41 words of former section 118k(a). The words “any part of his salary or compensation” are omitted as included in “anything of value”.

Standard changes are made to conform with the definitions applicable and the style of this title as outlined in the preface to the report.

Amendments

1974—Subsec. (a)(3). Pub. L. 93–443substituted “be a candidate for elective office” for “take an active part in political management or in political campaigns”.

Effective Date of 1974 Amendment

Amendment by Pub. L. 93–443effective Jan. 1, 1975, see section 410(a) ofPub. L. 93–443, set out as a note under section 431 of Title 2, The Congress.

The table below lists the classification updates, since Jan. 7, 2011, for this section. Updates to a broader range of sections may be found at the update page for containing chapter, title, etc.

The most recent Classification Table update that we have noticed was Friday, May 13, 2011

An empty table indicates that we see no relevant changes listed in the classification tables. If you suspect that our system may be missing something, please double-check with the Office of the Law Revision Counsel.

How To Use

Multiple entries for a section are listed most recent first, within the section.

The Session Year indicates which session of Congress was responsible for the changes classified. The Congress number forms the first part of the Public Law number; each Congress has two sessions.

Abbreviations used in the Description of Change column:

An empty field implies a standard amendment.
"new" means a new section or new note, or all new text of an existing section or note.
"nt" means note.
"nt [tbl]" means note [table].
"prec" means preceding.
"fr" means a transfer from another section.
"to" means a transfer to another section.
"omitted" means the section is omitted.
"repealed" means the section is repealed.
"nt ed change" and "ed change" - See the Editorial Classification Change Table [pdf].

The Public Law field is linked to the development of the law in the Thomas system at the Library of Congress.

The Statutes at Large field is linked to the text of the law, in the context of its volume of the Statutes at Large, at the Government Printing Office. Please note that it takes a while for these pages to get posted, so for very recent legislation, you need to look at the "enrolled" version at the Thomas site.

The Statutes at Large references have been rendered in the format used as page numbers in the Public Law web pages to which we link, to facilitate copy-paste into browser "find on this (web) page" tools. We are still working on a more direct link facility.

For serious comparison work, we suggest copying all or a portion of the Public Law text into your favorite text editor, for convenient content traversal and window control.

Sections with change type "new" are a special case, still under development. All are now listed, at the title level only.

You will find that occassionally a specific update you notice in a Public Law listed in a classification table will already have made it into the Code. We assume this is an artifact of the LRC edit process. The LII does not edit the LRC content.

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General Reference

Refer to the LRC (Law Revision Council) for explanations about the US Code from the folks who put it all together.

You can look for information about what it is and is not, which titles are positive law, the schedule of Supplements, etc. Under download you can find the source data we use here (GPO locator files), as well as, PDF files that look just like the paper books (these may be rather large).

Refer to the Thomas site for changes that have not yet made it into the classification tables.

5 USC	Description of Change	Session Year	Public Law	Statutes at Large

This is a list of parts within the Code of Federal Regulations for which this US Code section provides rulemaking authority.

This list is taken from the Parallel Table of Authorities and Rules provided by GPO [Government Printing Office].

It is not guaranteed to be accurate or up-to-date, though we do refresh the database weekly. More limitations on accuracy are described at the GPO site.

5 CFR - Title 5—Administrative Personnel

5 CFR 151 - POLITICAL ACTIVITY OF STATE OR LOCAL OFFICERS OR EMPLOYEES

21 CFR - Title 21—Food and Drugs

21 CFR 12 - FORMAL EVIDENTIARY PUBLIC HEARING

21 CFR 13 - PUBLIC HEARING BEFORE A PUBLIC BOARD OF INQUIRY

5 USC § 1502 - Influencing elections; taking part in political campaigns; prohibitions; exceptions

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