Increasing Voter Participation Through Health Care–Based Voter Registration

Abstract

ImportanceYoung people and historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups are poorly represented in the democratic process. Addressing voting inequities can make policy more responsive to the needs of these communities.ObjectiveTo assess whether leveraging health care settings as venues for voter registration and mobilization is useful, particularly for historically underrepresented populations in elections.Design, Setting, and ParticipantsIn 2020, nonpartisan nonprofit Vot-ER partnered with health care professionals and institutions to register people to vote. This cross-sectional study analyzed the demographics and voting behavior of people mobilized to register to vote in health care settings, including hospitals, community health centers, and medical schools across the US. The age and racial and ethnic identity data of individuals engaged through Vot-ER were compared to 2 national surveys of US adults, including the 2020 Cooperative Election Study (CES) and the 2020 American National Election Study (ANES).ExposureHealth care–based voter registration.Main Outcomes and MeasuresThe main outcomes were age composition, racial and ethnic composition, and voting history.ResultsOf the 12 441 voters contacted in health care settings, 41.9% were aged 18 to 29 years, 15.9% were identified as African American, 9.6% as Asian, 12.7% as Hispanic, and 60.4% as White. This distribution was significantly more diverse than the racial and ethnic distribution of the ANES (N = 5447) and CES (N = 39 014) samples, of which 72.5% and 71.19% self-identified as White, respectively. Voter turnout among health care–based contacts increased from 61.0% in 2016 to 79.8% in 2020, a turnout gain (18.8–percentage point gain) that was 7.7 percentage points higher than that of the ANES sample (11.1–percentage point gain). Demographically, the age distribution of voters contacted in health care settings was significantly different from the ANES and CES samples, with approximately double the proportion of young voters aged 18 to 29 years.Conclusion and RelevanceThis cross-sectional study suggests that health care–based voter mobilization reaches a distinctly younger and more racially and ethnically diverse population relative to those who reported contact from political campaigns. This analysis of the largest health care–based voter mobilization effort points to the unique impact that medical professionals may have on voter registration and turnout in the 2024 US elections. In the long term, health equity initiatives should prioritize expanding voting access to address the upstream determinants of health in historically marginalized communities.