The Democratic Party is so desperate to beat former President Donald Trump this November that it is literally calling on the mentally ill to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, a psychiatric hospital in Harrisburg that treats patients with addiction, depression, schizophrenia and other disorders, urges its patients to register to vote when they enter the hospital before they have been treated or stabilized.
“Voting is an important part of the reconstruction process,” says a press release sent to the Washington Free Beacon.
The hospital’s website explains that voting is a “therapeutic tool” that “helps empower patients and makes them feel good.”
Because PPI is a mental health clinic and not a voter registration expert, it turned to Vot-ER, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that develops “nonpartisan civic engagement tools” for “every area of the health care system.”
Vot-ER is now available in over 500 hospitals and clinics across the country, including Arizona, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.
According to the website, Vot-ER is part of a larger health care movement that aims to “empower patients and providers to reduce the underlying drivers of health disparities.”
“Together,” promises Vot-ER, “we will combat the causes of the population’s health problems and promote a healthier, fairer society.”
But how bipartisan is this partnership between Vot-ER and the doctors who push voter registration on their patients? What happens when a patient disagrees with their doctor’s assessment of the “root causes” of certain health outcomes? Can we really trust these doctors not to push their personal political views on their patients, especially on sensitive social issues like abortion? This is especially troubling in mental health settings like PPI’s.
It doesn’t help that Vot-ER was founded by a doctor who served as Harris’s personal advisor and that the organization is funded by left-wing nonprofit groups that advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion in the health care system.
As studies of past nonprofit voter registration drives have shown, these efforts are rarely conducted on a truly bipartisan basis. When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg funded supposedly bipartisan voter registration drives in 2020, it later emerged that he focused his efforts on “deeply Democratic urban areas.” The end result was a huge increase in Democratic Party registrations, a narrow victory for President Joe Biden in Wisconsin, and a huge loss of faith in our electoral system.
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Our country’s health care system already has enough trust issues. It does not need openly partisan organizations like Vot-ER corrupting the doctor-patient relationship, especially in mental health facilities.
No matter who wins in November, Congress should ban the use of nonprofit funds for voter registration. If the Democratic and Republican parties want to register voters, they should do so with campaign funds. Nonprofits should not be involved in voter registration, which is inherently a partisan activity.
