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ACEP Now: Vol 39 – No 06 – June 2020

Alister Martin

Health care-based nonpartisan voter registration has worked before. In 2008, the National Association of Community Health Centers ran a voter registration drive in health centers that resulted in more than 18,000 low- and middle-income citizens added to official rolls.¹¹ Another program, conducted in 2012 at two Federally Qualified Health Centers in the Bronx, New York, demonstrated that successful nonpartisan voter registration initiatives can be run out of community health centers without requiring significant physician effort, disrupting clinic workflows, or compromising the patient-doctor relationship.¹¹

Patients have been extremely receptive to nonpartisan voter registration services, with one study finding that 89 percent of individuals approached in a health center waiting room expressed openness to registering to vote.¹¹ These models, specifically directed toward low-acuity patients, are readily adapted to hospital ED waiting rooms.

Another Initiative: VotER

Accordingly, emergency departments across the United States have already begun implementing such voter registration efforts. VotER is one such effort that was founded at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and has since been adopted at more than a dozen emergency departments across the United States. The program uses iPad-based kiosks and posters and discharge paperwork with QR codes in low-acuity emergency department waiting areas to offer patients a convenient, nonpartisan, and optional opportunity to register to vote or check their registration status while waiting.

The platform does not interrupt clinical care or rely on doctors, physician assistants, or nurses providing care to interact with the voter registration process. Patients are guided through the voter registration application on their phone or the iPad-based kiosk in 90 seconds or less. Emergency departments can play a critical role in encouraging patients to register to vote without detracting from the delivery of care using platforms like VotER. Groups like VotER, Patient Voting, and Med Out The Vote are launching the first Civic Health Month in August 2020 to bring a renewed focus to helping patients get to the ballot box, particularly when COVID-19 has made voting in a safe and healthy way a public health issue.

Health care professionals must be concerned with our democracy’s health and mindful of who gets to participate in it. The demographic overlap of patients who lack access to stable care—and therefore use the emergency department at higher rates—and those who historically have low civic engagement affords a natural opportunity to pilot and develop voter registration efforts in the emergency department.

ED-based nonpartisan voter registration via nonintrusive platforms such as VotER is  an innovation that can improve our civic system and the well-being of the communities we serve. With an eye toward national elections later this year, emergency departments have the potential to elevate all patient voices in our national dialogue of how to deliver effective, affordable health care in the United States.

Visit www.vot-ER.org to learn more.