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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   30059 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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Did y'all talk about this story by Aaron Sibarium earlier this month?

Meet the Little-Known Activist Group That Has Tens of Thousands of Doctors Registering Patients To Vote

The article starts by describing a psychiatric institute in Pennsylvania that started an initiative to register voters.

Located in a swing state that could decide the 2024 election, the hospital asks psychiatric inpatients, regardless of diagnosis, if they would be interested in "voter registration tools" that let them check their nearest polling station and register to vote online. Patients can also request a mail-in ballot with "assistance" from hospital staff, according to a pair of papers about the project, which began in 2020.

...as the institute puts it, [voting] is a "therapeutic tool" that "helps empower patients and makes them feel good."

"Voting is an important part of the recovery process," Julie Graziane, a geriatric psychiatrist

Since the initiative is in a medical institution it must be justified, because you can't just waltz into medicine and decide voting is important. No, these institutes are bound to a sacred oath that commits their staff to the health of patients. By necessity, voting must become good for patients.

After the starting the voter registration initiative, the Pennsylvania hospital "has turned to the nonprofit Vot-ER, which develops "nonpartisan civic engagement tools" for "every corner of the healthcare system." This is where my lack of strong objection turns into a fully committed objection.

Founded by an emergency room physician at Harvard Medical School, Alister Martin, who served as an adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, Vot-ER has helped more than 50,000 doctors register their patients to vote. Vot-ER claims to be nonpartisan, it is staffed by progressive operatives, funded by progressive foundations, and run by an umbrella nonprofit, A Healthier Democracy, that has referred to DEI as "the bedrock of fair healthcare." And ahead of the 2024 election, it is leading a movement—backed by top medical groups and an executive order from the Biden-Harris administration

The basic gist is that medical staff wear a QR code around their neck and point patients to it in order to register. A 2021 executive order encouraged this behavior, but Vot-ER's site only cites the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 in its FAQ page as its legal reason to exist. Medical professionals have the greenlight to seek out patients and proactively attempt to register them to vote.

I did not vet every link in the article, but I did look at a few, and as far as I can tell most of the quotes are presented in a fair enough, if biased, context. There are professionals willing to say stuff like these bits:

Debra Koss, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Rutgers... described a patient who, depressed by the poor conditions in her Section 8 apartment building, gained an "internal locus of control" by registering to vote. "Ultimately, she became less anxious and depressed," the doctors wrote in an op-ed last year, "and for the first time in 15 years, her intrusive suicidal thoughts ceased to exist."

I think if voting cures depression that's great, but I suspect voting does not cure depression and Debra Koss is not offering a medical opinion.

At the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, Graziane, the geriatric psychiatrist, has argued that voting can "increase life satisfaction, decrease risky behaviors and increase mental wellbeing."

Their argument echoed what [the founder of Vote-ER] told the New York Times in a 2020 interview... The time for doctors "being impartial and apolitical," he said, "is over."

I watched most of a 20 minute talk from the founder of Vot-ER from 2023. It was very heavy on the voting aspect, the benefits of voting, and the benefit of voter registration. Not so much attention given to the medical aspect, ethical questions, or potential impacts. I briefly trolled through Vot-ER's site and, as far as I could tell, they don't provide any studies supporting the idea their program has significant positive medical benefits to patients. Which I would have figured would be necessary. If a doctor is doing something to me as a doctor it should improving my health.

If a person comes in with a broken arm and you offer to register them to vote on their way out I think this carries ethical questions but, fine, whatever. When the program extends to mental health institutions and picks up a motto of Voting Is Great For You Actually Because Anecdote this seems like it should be made an issue.

I'm no expert, but I am not under the impression that dedicating more attention to politics is the best path to a healthy mental state. I am under the impression that politics, particularly of the national sort, in this day and age appears to degrade many people's mental well being. Encouraging people to vote is not necessarily damaging to their psyche, but a focus on voting might be a gateway drug. An organization, staffed by party operatives or affiliates, pushing a political non-profits goals onto medical staff in hospitals is wrong.

Like ballot harvesting I think it's sleazy. I can accept sleaziness in politics. People accept that politics is not holy and sacred, but dirty. Importing it into medicine, which I know is not new, seems particularly bad though. Initiatives like this drives resentment when, on the other hand, I am inundated by messaging that claims one party is holy, good, and joyous democracy lovers-- while this party engages in what appears to be deeply cynical, irreverent electioneering. I guess I'll accept sleazy politics in medicine as well.

Given the low income urban persons they’re interacting with plus the political correlates of anxiety/depression, I suspect this initiative it strategic in getting more democratic votes. 50k registrations is huge! Doubtful that many will come close to voting but that’s easily Enough to sway the state and thus win the election for the Dems

I do feel like republicans just don’t have near the strategic thinking necessary for this sort of thing - does Trump have a Karl Rove who can help find a path to victory?

Doubtful that many will come close to voting

That's where ballot harvesting comes in. Or straight up fraud; intercept the ballots coming for the patients, fill 'em out, send 'em in.

Yeah it’s a shame the right doesn’t seem to have the will to engage in more aggressive ballot harvesting.

The right doesn't have the penetration into the right professions to pull it off -- this magnifies what Nybbler is saying, in that even if there is a right-wing social worker/doctor/whatever who wants to go around 'encouraging' people to fill out ballots, the other 99% of his cow orkers will be lined up around the corner waiting to rat him out.

The right can't do it for the same reasons they can't riot. The right can make 100 plausible accusations of ballot harvesting or fraud, and this will be "John Righty said, without evidence..." or "John Righty falsely accused..." and the courts will just dismiss the case. The left will respond with one accusation (true, false, or in one case a stunt to show how easy it is) and it will be taken entirely seriously, the media will crow about how this proves the right are the real cheaters, and the rightists involved will be prosecuted. For some reason even judges on the right prefer cases against the right than the left, perhaps feeling the right should be held to higher standards because they know better.

I’m not convinced it would work out well without the sort of institutional cover the left gets, even in its currently decaying state.

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