Toolkit: Voter Registration and Equitable Access to Elections

Published: 1/31/2024

ACP recognizes that voting impacts health and health care.  The College supports policies that ensure safe and equitable access to voting and encourages health care professionals and their patients to vote.

Background

In December 2023, the Annals of Internal Medicine published Ensuring Equitable Access to Participation in the Electoral Process: A Policy Brief From the American College of Physicians, which seeks to inform physicians, medical students, and other health care professionals on the links between electoral processes and health; encourage civic participation; and offer policy recommendations to support safe and equitable access to electoral participation to advance health equity for both patients and health care professionals. This paper responded to two Board of Regents-approved resolutions calling on the College to develop policy addressing partisan gerrymandering and supporting health care-sponsored voter engagement. ACP recognizes that health and electoral processes are directly connected through the institution of policies by ballot initiative, such as Medicaid expansion, and the election of officials who incorporate health into their platforms. They are also indirectly connected, as civic participation connects individuals to their community and empowers them with agency in decision making.

ACTION:

  • ACP is a partner with Vot-ER, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to integrate civic engagement into healthcare, to encourage members to get involved in encouraging civic participation. ACP encourages members to facilitate patient voter registration, confirm their voter registration status, and check registration and election dates in their state.
    • Note: The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 allows health care facilities to facilitate nonpartisan voter registration for interested patients.  Patients choose whether to use Vot-ER’s platform and when they do so, they share information on their own mobile devices. Thus, voter information is not subject to HIPAA regulations.
  • Vote.gov: Check your registration status, polling location, and register/change your registration
  • Consult this guidance from the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) on Voter Registration and Health Centers for more information on permissible activities and legal requirements.

Upcoming Election Dates

Several elections will be held in 2025, including gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey and local elections across the country. Additional special elections are expected to occur throughout the year as elected officials are appointed to roles in the incoming presidential administration. Find a list of upcoming local and statewide elections here.

In preparation for the next election, you can check to make sure your registration is up to date and confirm your polling location here.

State Activity

According to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, state legislatures enacted a vast number of voting-related laws in 2024. Some of this legislation aims to restrict ballot access, while some aims to make ballot access more accessible. Between the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, at least 30 states enacted 78 restrictive laws, almost doubling the number of restrictive laws enacted in the prior two presidential election cycles combined.

ACP policy supports the following legislative actions:

  • Holiday designations for Election Day(s)
  • Expanded polling locations and/or hours
  • Automatic Voter Registration
  • Same-day voter registration
  • The drawing of fair electoral districts by nonpartisan electoral commissions
  • Re-enfranchisement of individuals with felony convictions upon completion of their sentence

ACP policy opposes the following legislative actions:

  • Restricting access to mail-in ballots
  • Limiting polling locations and/or hours
  • Partisan gerrymandering

References