As the link below describes, during this political season some ERs and clinics across the country registered new voters while at the same time treating them as patients.
Such medical facilities have probably wrapped up this activity by now, with the election almost here, but a number of them did engage in " ... nonpartisan efforts to register patients in free clinics, community centers and emergency rooms."
And they addressed to a degree the "... overlap between the millions in the United States who are using emergency rooms for health care and those who are not registered to vote." And their goal was to make voter registration " ... easy and done while patients wait."
Also " ... It's a nonpartisan program and health care workers help patients figure out how to vote, but not who to vote for."
"So far, about
40,000 patients have gotten help registering or requesting ballots through VotER. Vote Health 2020 also says it's helped thousands nationwide."
Some may disagree with this approach, saying that medical facilities should stick to medicine, but perhaps it can be counterargued that the goal of medicine is to treat the whole person, and encouraging the patient to take advantage of his civic opportunity to vote, in order to improve his situation, is a form of doing that. Especially if the encouragement is done in a nonpartisan way.
(If you do read the article linked below, look at the two links in the second paragraph, as they provide specifics on how this process has worked).
Interesting and unexpected activity to be taking place in a medical setting.
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/18/923754421/emergency-rooms-and-health-clinics-become-voter-registration-hubsSo what do you think? Good idea or not for ERs and clinics to be doing this?