by Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell
Temple Health is using tax-exempt university resources to operate a get-out-the-vote effort in a predominantly Democratic area.
The university health system, affiliated with Temple University in Philadelphia, is operating a voter-registration drive and get-out-the-vote effort in North Philadelphia, which is predominantly liberal and votes overwhelmingly Democratic, according to internal documents obtained by Do No Harm and shared with The Daily Signal. Do No Harm is a Glen Allen, Va.-based nonprofit medical policy advocacy group focused on depoliticizing the health care system.
The Philadelphia voter-registration effort is controversial, inasmuch as Pennsylvania may be the most hotly contested swing state in the Nov. 5 presidential election.
Do No Harm obtained a video of Temple’s volunteer training and the volunteer application form, which asks if Temple students and employees are interested in canvassing in North Philadelphia, staffing a voter-registration table at a hospital, or helping with emergency absentee balloting.
According to the training video, volunteers staff tables in Temple hospitals and canvass door-to-door in North Philadelphia, asking people if they are registered to vote, helping them register, helping them make a plan to vote in person or by mail, and educating them on the voting process.
The leader of the training session was clear that volunteers should not share who they are voting for or share information that can be seen as an endorsement or opposition to a particular candidate or party.
The mission of the Temple Health Vote initiative is to “promote voter registration and civic engagement for Temple Health patients and members of the North Philadelphia community,” a slide in the video says.
Trainees learn how to register individuals who don’t have Social Security numbers or driver’s licenses. The training director informs them they are legally allowed to mail other people’s voter-registration forms in for them.
Dr. Whitney Cabey, an assistant professor at the Katz Medical School, told The Daily Signal the voter-registration initiative primarily canvasses “neighborhoods that are approximate to Temple Health System.” She said health care professionals are responsible for helping patients vote.
“We are out here to promote civic health, and there is ample evidence that identifies that when people are most more civically engaged, and when they’re enfranchised, it’s also correlated with better health outcomes,” Cabey said. “It’s a nonpartisan activity, and it’s a part of our responsibility as physicians, as health care professionals, and as other people who are kind of affiliated with the health institution, to help people plan to vote safely if they’re going to, and to become as informed as they need to be or care to be about their voting options.”
Temple Health is tax-exempt, as it is part of Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth System of Higher Education.
“It’s exempt from federal taxes, from state taxes, and it gets money from the federal government,” said Dr. Kevin Williams, professor of cardiovascular sciences and medicine at Temple’s Katz School of Medicine. “It gets money from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and it’s engaging in a voter- registration drive that specifically and narrowly targets North Philadelphia, which, if you look at any demographic data, is somewhere in excess of 80-plus percent Democrat now.”
Voter-registration drives are often partisan, but partisan activity should not be run out of a nonpartisan, tax-exempt, tax-supported institution, says Williams, who serves as a senior fellow at Do No Harm.
Other Philadelphia-area hospital systems are also registering patients to vote, including Penn Medicine, Jefferson Health, Main Line Health, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Temple has a history of partisan activity. The far-left Human Rights Campaign designated Temple as a “LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality Leader” for five years.
A university health system like Temple Health should be nonpartisan, Williams said.
“They have to be apolitical, nonpartisan, nonpolitical,” he said. “We’re asking rural conservative voters in Pennsylvania to financially support an institution that’s doing a voter-registration drive exclusively in hyper-Democrat areas. That’s not fair.”
Taxpayers support university health systems though funding federal and state programs such as Medicaid.
“If people at Temple want to do a voter-registration drive on their own time, using their own resources, this is a highly American activity,” Williams said. “But what they’re doing is, they’re using the listserve at Temple, and most of their emails, if not all of them, are being sent during working hours.”
“So, they’re making use of Temple University and Temple Medical Center resources to push a voter-registration drive in a hyper-Democrat area,” he addsed.
Temple should be focusing on patient health, not partisan activity, Williams said.
“They’re not going out to rural Pennsylvania. They’re not going out to conservative churches,” Williams said. “They’re going out in an area that that is easily and verifiably, overwhelmingly full of Democratic voters.”
“I’m very concerned about the message that this sends to medical students and trainees that somehow it’s just fine to hijack an officially nonpartisan, tax-exempt and tax-supported institutions for partisan, political purposes,” he said.
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Elizabeth (Troutman) Mitchell is the reporting fellow for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Daily Signal Podcast.”
Photo “Voter Registration Drive” Fibonacci Blue CC2.0.
