Hospitals and community health centers are cornerstones of our communities. At our clinics at AltaMed Health Services in Los Angeles and Orange counties and Stanford Medicine in the San Francisco Bay Area, we treat hundreds of thousands of people per year, many of whom are young, disabled, low-income and/or people of color. Far too many of the people we serve are disengaged in democracy, and because policy at all levels of government shapes our health, this has to change.
Health systems are well-positioned to address these inequities, and federal legislation empowers them to do so. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and guidance from the Internal Revenue Service support nonprofit organizations—like many hospitals and clinics—in nonpartisan voter registration.
Individual health care providers are also bringing nonpartisan conversations about voting into their clinical practice. Professionals at more than 700 hospitals and clinics nationwide have helped both colleagues and their patients register to vote with tools from nonprofit partners like Vot-ER. They help people to register, without endorsing a political party, policy or candidate.
Vot-ER has reported that in 2020, institutions and providers used the organization’s tools to help more than 47,000 people initiate voter registration or request a mail-in ballot. Of that number, 84 percent of people who completed the registration process did so successfully, and of those who registered successfully, 85 percent voted in the general election. More people of color and young people voted after registering through Vot-ER than in the general electorate.
No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no
Why Spanish? I remember when I got naturalized I had to prove I could speak english, if not you wont become an american, not an american no voting, so again, why in Spanish?
Well that's just dumb.
What could possibly go wrong? 🙄
So medical providers are becoming politicized. Shouldn’t they be focusing their resources on providing the best care possible with out distractions? I think so.