Health care-based voter registration, Vot-ER, reaches young, diverse population
Key takeaways:
- Researchers observed more racially/ethnically diverse individuals included in the Vot-ER population vs. general U.S. population.
- The Vot-ER population had more young voters than the general U.S. population.
The health care-based voter mobilization organization, Vot-ER, registered and mobilized a younger and more racially and ethnically diverse population of voters for the 2020 election vs. the general population of U.S. adults.
The findings, published in JAMA Health Forum, suggest medical professionals can play an important role in voter registration and turnout during the 2024 U.S. elections, researchers concluded.
‘Voting-eligible public’
“With every election in the United States, millions of eligible voters do not ultimately vote. For those who do vote, they are typically disproportionately older and more likely to be white than the general voting-eligible public,” Katherine McCabe, PhD, associate professor in the department of political science at Rutgers University, told Healio. “This has serious implications for the ability of underrepresented populations to have their voice heard broadly in public policy, specifically when it comes to issues that affect the health of their communities.”
Organizations, such as Vot-ER, have made efforts to meet potential voters “where they are,” McCabe added.
“Vot-ER provides voter registration tools to health care settings, facilitating the ability for health care professionals to help get their patients and community members ready to vote in upcoming elections,” she said.
The cross-sectional study evaluated the impact of Vot-ER among 12,441 voters across various health care settings before the 2020 U.S. elections compared with two national surveys of U.S. adults, including the 2020 Cooperative Election Study (CES; n = 39,014) and the 2020 American National Election Study (ANES; n = 5,447).
They examined whether health care-based outreach engaged a distinctive demographic population compared with the general voting-eligible public and the types of potential voters who are typically contacted in more traditional forms of political mobilization.
Main outcomes included age composition, racial and ethnic composition, and voting history.
Vot-ER population
Results showed a significantly larger proportion of racially/ethnically diverse individuals included in the Vot-ER population, with 60.4% self-identifying as white compared with 72.5% in the ANES and 71.19% in the CES.
Researchers found that voter turnout among health care-based contacts increased from 61% in 2016 to 79.8% in 2020, which corresponded to an 18.8 percentage point gain, in the Vot-ER population compared with 11.1 in the ANES population.
In addition, researchers observed a higher proportion (41.9%) of young voters aged between 18 and 29 years among the Vot-ER population compared with the CES (17.4%) and ANES (15.2%) populations.
‘Vot-ER’s health care-based mobilization reached a population who had a lower rate of voting in previous elections,” McCabe said. “This shows that health care-based mobilization has the potential to reach a type of potential voter that might otherwise not be mobilized through traditional forms of political contact and be left out of the political process.
“Political science research has shown that a voter’s resources and their opportunity — the extent to which they are situated in networks and institutions that help facilitate political participation — influence whether they will ultimately participate in an election,” she continued. “These findings show the promise of bringing resources to the voter and creating opportunities for mobilization in settings that voters encounter in everyday life.”
2024 election
Additional research is now being carried out by study co-author, Alister F. Martin, MD, MPP, and colleagues examining the impact of bringing voter registration tools to health care settings, according to McCabe.
“The Vot-ER team is also working with many partner institutions and health care professionals on outreach in the lead up to the 2024 election,” she said. “Physicians are critical to the health of a community, and this extends beyond traditional conceptions of their enormous impact on physical health. The American Medical Association has recognized voting as a social determinant of health, and our study shows that health care professionals have a unique ability to bring a more inclusive set of potential voters into the political process.”
For more information:
Katherine McCabe, PhD, can be reached at k.mccabe@rutgers.edu.
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