Training Video Library
Contents
Initiate a conversation about voter registration
What does it look like to invite your patients to engage with the tools? Well, the answer is it can look like whatever works best for you and it fits into the structure of your service/visit with your patient. That said, we have collaborated with voting experts and healthcare professionals to provide scripts that are nonpartisan, they are research-backed, and they are appropriate for most clinical settings. These scripts are available on our website but I’ll give you a quick rundown here: so one way to introduce these tools to patients is during the social history portion of their visit. While asking other questions such as do you smoke do you drink are you safe at home you could add also, “Are you registered to vote?” You can also add this question at the end of the social history check-in and that will sound something like this:
“We’re all done with this part of your history but I now want to transition to something that’s really important to your health and well-being—and that’s voting. Are you registered to vote?””
Another way to introduce these tools to patients is at the end of a patient’s visit. for example, this might sound like:
“Before I leave i’d like to check if you are eligible to vote and registered to vote at your current address. Your vote is a powerful tool to address and improve issues you care about like your health. Local elections are often decided by a small number of voters and the impact on your community is immediate. Through your vote you have a say on issues like the prices of medication and the cost of health insurance that affect your friends and family.”
Talk to patients about the power of their vote
What does it look like to invite your patients to engage with the tools? Well, the answer is it can look like whatever works best for you and it fits into the structure of your service/visit with your patient. That said, we have collaborated with voting experts and healthcare professionals to provide scripts that are nonpartisan, they are research-backed, and they are appropriate for most clinical settings. These scripts are available on our website but I’ll give you a quick rundown here: so one way to introduce these tools to patients is during the social history portion of their visit. While asking other questions such as do you smoke do you drink are you safe at home you could add also, “Are you registered to vote?” You can also add this question at the end of the social history check-in and that will sound something like this:
“We’re all done with this part of your history but I now want to transition to something that’s really important to your health and well-being—and that’s voting. Are you registered to vote?””
Another way to introduce these tools to patients is at the end of a patient’s visit. for example, this might sound like:
“Before I leave i’d like to check if you are eligible to vote and registered to vote at your current address. Your vote is a powerful tool to address and improve issues you care about like your health. Local elections are often decided by a small number of voters and the impact on your community is immediate. Through your vote you have a say on issues like the prices of medication and the cost of health insurance that affect your friends and family.”
24/7 Helpline for Hard Questions
One of the most important things to note is the helpline on the landing page so that is the text is button at the bottom of the screen. I’m sure you’re all thinking what if patients have questions about voter registration that I cannot answer or just do not know?
Well the good news is that your interaction with the patient should only involve inviting them to engage with your badge, scan the qr code or text the number.
Our goal is to help you incorporate civic engagement into your work while maintaining respect for your priorities as service providers and the job that you signed up for. Which means that we do not expect you to walk them through the process of registering to vote or to answer any of their questions. Again, the biggest thing is that we do not want to take time out of your already extremely busy work schedule. That is what the helpline is for, is to answer patients questions in real time with anything voting related. So we have a partnership with a non-partisan organization called Vote Riders, whose mission is to be able to answer questions from voters and provide them with accurate up-to-date information related to voter registration election laws and voting requirements.
On the bottom right of the landing page that’s circled here, there is that “text us” button you can let your patients know that if they have any questions related to the registration process and that they could direct chat with someone that can answer their questions by using that “text us” button feature on the landing page.
Talking to Young Patients and Parents
One of the most incredible groups of voters that Vot-ER has the opportunity to partner with are young voters and part of the reason we’re so lucky to be able to do so much of that work is that the biggest group of health professionals in Vot-ER are pediatricians. And there are two audiences that pediatricians reach, they reach young voters and then they reach their parents. On this page we’ll talk a little bit about what it’s like to talk with a young voter. And at age 18 these voters are at a particular moment where their bodies are changing, their agency is changing and this is a moment to begin a habit that can become a lifelong habit as a part of that transition into adulthood.
Again starting the same, by wanting to check if you’re eligible to vote and registered at your current address. As a young person you have more power than you might think. Building on the collective in 2020, voters like you made history and set voting records and your vote allows you to create the change that you want to see in your community. Diffusing the sense of cynicism that can often come from the experiences that people have had in their lived lives and then once again talking about how simple and easy it is to engage them and using technology, so that it is something suitable for a young voter to engage on.
And then there is the parent and um the parent is another really powerful person in this. We actually know that the parents of newborns vote at lower rates than other other folks because it is harder to access the vote when you are supporting a newborn and this is another group that on audience pediatricians who are part of Vot-ER can speak with. Using the same opening as a parent,
“I bet you are looking forward to the future of your child’s education and health care the politicians who make the laws are going to do so based on the preferences of the people who vote for them including on these issues and therefore your vote allows you to help create the changes you want to see for your children”.
Tapping into that again community as the key unit that people are trying to make change for and then driving on the resources in power that are created there.
Roleplay: Pre-Registering Young Patients
Dr – So Victoria, I see you’re almost 18.
V – Yes
Dr – And I see you have your phone with you.
V – I do
Dr – that’s awesome! What do you think about me registering you to vote today?
V – I would love to
Dr- You’re almost 18 right?
V – Yes, yes
Dr – so look here, I have a badge here, it’s got a qr code. So here you can try if you just point your camera to here and it’ll take you to a psychological vote and it literally takes about three minutes and you will be pre-registered to vote.
V – ooh nice! yeah, I would love to be registered.
Dr – Yeah I’m really encouraging my older teenage patients to register to vote because you know you want to vote for your family, for your community, for the things that you believe in, and for the future that you want. So I think it’s really really important for right younger voters to show up. So if you just scroll through the steps you will get to a point where you need your social security number. So do you know it? or that’s where you might need…
V – I do know it
Dr – Okay that’s awesome. And then at some point you’ll get to to options where it says register or pre-register for 16 and 17 year old’s okay and that’s where you’ll go
Talking to Skeptical Voters
So we really, really do emphasize that few votes make a difference in so many elections, especially local elections to skeptical voters. Because we know a lot of folks sometimes feel like their vote does not make a difference and it’s not being heard. A lot of people feel that way, which is why a lot of people don’t vote. Well the truth is that those in power only care about or will only listen to the interests and appease those groups of people that voted them into a position of power. It shouldn’t be this way but this is why we need to make sure we are voting. We need to make sure our communities utilize their voice to advocate not just for themselves but also for their neighbors, their friends and their families. So we put the power back in our hands when we decide who’s in power and then our elected officials are forced to appease us and address our concerns and our needs because they know we could take them out of their position of power just as easily as we put them into a position of power.
Roleplay: Engaging Skeptical Voters
I am going to stop screen sharing and do a quick role play with Uri, doing something that we did actually just a few weeks ago in arizona. So the story here is we did our site visit to Arizona to a couple community health centers that we work with and the same conversation you’re about to hear actually happened in real life and I want to share it with you just now.
All right, again this actually happened. So Yuri and I are gonna try and repeat the thing that actually happened as best as we can. So I am somebody coming into a community health center where I often receive various services and I’ll kick this off.
Hi Dr. Baker, I’m here to get my food from the pantry today, I’m excited to see you.
Dr – Hi Aliya, how are you?
A – ‘m okay, Dr Baker, I’m doing okay.
Dr -That’s good, I see you got your food today. Now let me ask you something, are you registered to vote?
A – Oh that sounds cool, Dr. Baker, but I’m not interested in that sort of thing.
Dr – Well why not?
A – Dr. Baker, I don’t, I don’t do politics, I don’t believe in that politics stuff.
Dr – Can I ask why?
A – Dr. Baker, big government hasn’t done anything for me, I’ve voted and voted and just nothing seems to change.
Dr – Well I understand that and many Americans feel the same way and that’s why it’s so important that our voices are heard. So I always tell people to act locally but think globally. So when we act locally, when we vote our mayor in, we vote our sheriff in, when we vote for the people on our school board, we are making change that’s why it matters. Now do you know if you’re registered to vote?
A – Oh I don’t even remember. Can we check?
Dr – Yeah let’s flip over this badge here and we can check your status and we can register you to vote and there’s even a place to ask questions.
A – Thank you Dr. Baker, I appreciate that!
Dr – Of course.
Roleplay: Engaging Undocumented Patients
Dr – Hello Maria, Thank you for coming again. I did have your results. Everything looks amazing and uh one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about is voting.
M – Dr shapiro, I’ve never voted before.
Dr – Maria that happens, may I ask why you have not voted before?
M – You know Dr. Shapiro, I’ve been coming to see you for 10 years and you know I really trust you. And uh I’m not documented here, I wasn’t born here.
Dr – Maria, thank you so much for actually sharing that part of your life with me. One of the important things about this is that if you can actually not vote, you can actually help other people around you, your family members friends, to actually get civically engaged and make sure that our voices are heard.
M – You know Dr. Shapiro, where my family is from voting didn’t mean anything, it didn’t make a difference. Why should I tell my family and friends to vote?
Dr – You raise a very important question, at this moment here um every vote counts it’s thoroughly counted, it’s secure and safe and most importantly it’s secret. I understand that other countries, they can actually have different ways to do things, but right now if we do not vote and we are not represented the things for schools and other resources that we need for our community can be not there for us, then at the moment that we vote and we share our concerns where we’re coming from and most importantly what do we need that’s when actually change starts to happen.
M – My little sister just turned 20, and she was born here, So iIm gonna tell her that she needs to vote in the next election.
Dr – That’s extremely, extremely important right now because right now as you know 20 percent of your health actually depends on hospitals, doctors like me, nurses and systems that are taking care of you. But that 80 percent of your health is the magic that happens when you walk out of this clinic, that’s the environment that’s having healthy parks for your kids to run, that’s where you know a lot of the other things that we have like security and services can make a huge difference and impact to the future of our of us and most importantly for our kids.
M – If you have any other questions feel free to let me know, I have a lot of resources and I will share this QR code with you, that way you can actually share it with your sister.
Dr – Thank you Dr. Shapiro, always a pleasure!
Overview of Vot-ER’s Tools
Hello everyone, I’m Aliya Bhatia, the executive director at Vot-ER here, with an updated Vot-ER tools training as of September 2022. We’ll run through a couple topics to talk about the latest and greatest tools available through our various Vot-ER efforts. First, how we choose our tools, we want all of Vot-ER tools to be rigorously nonpartisan, accessible and to be accurate and support follow-through. So we’re not just supporting patients with voter registration, but helping them get all the way to the Ballot Box. We provide many different ways for patients to engage our tools including: QR codes, texting a short code or just plain old typing a URL into a browser. Once you get to the landing page, you’ll notice a couple things.
The first is that we don’t want you to have to be an expert on voting, so we offer a helpline in partnership with Vote Writers that is in English and Spanish 24/7 to make sure that people can get timely information about how to vote in their particular context.
We also want to make sure that patients understand the reasons behind voting and how it’s connected to their health and so we have a section called Why Should I Vote, to walk through exactly that question.
Our voter registration tools are designed to be non-partisan ways to connect patients with their Secretary of State office, in an accessible and helpful way. Depending which state and which institution you’re at, you may see one of these three options on the page. The main difference is that the option on the left does not require a phone number or an email address in order to walk through it. Versus the other two options that you see here do require that in order in order to move forward. All three of these options are available in English and Spanish, and all three of them will mail the person a copy of the paperwork needed to register to vote. If that person does not have a state issued ID or if they are in a state that does not have online voter registration. We also want to support people who want to vote from home for whatever reason that they want to we partner with Vote.org in order to do this and provide a vote at home option to request an absentee ballot.
I do want to take a second to note here that these tools look really different across each state because each state has different voted home rules and some states unfortunately do not support vote at home and we want to be upfront about that as you explore these tools. We also want to make sure that close to the elections we’re really helping people who are already registered to vote to prepare for their upcoming elections and to do this we’ve partnered with the healthy voting guides. To make sure that we can share how you vote by state with important information about early voting for example and details about when polls open and close you can also later and closer to the elections research your ballot using vote 4-1-1. A service offered by the League of Women Voters to research your ballot using candidate responses to surveys.
Together we hope all of these tools support patients from start to finish with their voting journey and help us build Healthy Communities that are powered by a truly inclusive democracy. Thank you