The Republican National Committee on Tuesday sent letters to election officials in six swing states urging them to monitor Vot-ER, the nonprofit that helps doctors register their patients to vote, for possible violations of election law, according to copies of the letters obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Addressed to secretaries of state in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada, the letters argue that Vot-ER is "weaponizing the healthcare system" for partisan ends and "threatening … election integrity" with its materials, which have been used to register patients in emergency rooms, substance abuse clinics, and even psychiatric hospitals.
"It is not difficult to imagine how a patient could feel pressured to register to vote or support a certain candidate to receive medical care," the letters say. "The RNC is and always has been a staunch supporter of voter registration and participation, but this perversion of the doctor-patient relationship raises serious legal concerns given the laws and regulations governing that relationship and voter registration."
Vot-ER is already facing a congressional probe over whether it has taken steps to prevent the registration of illegal immigrants, who, according to a script Vot-ER provides doctors, have been encouraged by their physicians to "help" naturalized relatives "get ready to vote." Tuesday’s letters could ramp up scrutiny on this practice as the group targets traditional Democratic voting blocs ahead of the 2024 election, prioritizing clinics in majority-minority areas as well as those serving patients under age 24.
"Trusting individuals who violated this nation’s immigration laws to only register friends and family who are lawfully able to register to vote is foolish and dangerous," the letters say, "especially when the patients are not legally allowed to register themselves."
Vot-ER did not respond to a request for comment.
The RNC’s warning comes in the wake of a Free Beacon report showing how Vot-ER, which was founded by a former Kamala Harris staffer and receives funding from Democratic dark money groups, has injected politics into nearly every imaginable clinical setting. Doctors have used the group’s tools to register the parents of infants in the neonatal intensive care unit as well as patients in a Pennsylvania psychiatric ward, many of whom are suicidal or suffer from psychotic disorders.
The Pennsylvania initiative, launched in the lead-up to the 2020 election, did not exclude any diagnoses.
Though Vot-ER has denied steering patients toward one candidate or party, doctors affiliated with the group routinely use left-coded language—"abortion rights," for example—when interacting with patients and the public. That has allowed it to push a partisan agenda without overtly violating election law and raised concerns about the exploitation of vulnerable patients from both health care workers and medical ethicists, who say the group’s efforts reek of coercion.
Jane Rosenthal, the former chair of the ethics committee at New York University’s Tisch Hospital, previously told the Free Beacon that patients hospitalized for mental illness sometimes lack the capacity to make decisions. Elliot Kaminetzky, a psychologist who specializes in anxiety disorders, said that such patients may feel pressured to register in the hope of shortening their stay.
The RNC cites these concerns as grounds for heightened scrutiny from election officials, who could investigate and even prosecute Vot-ER if it appears to have overstepped the line between seedy and unlawful.
"Targeting our community’s most vulnerable for political purposes during their treatment period is simply beyond the pale," the letters read. "Their actions offend not only on a moral level but suggest at the very least indifference to illegal activity related to voter registration."
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