photo by: Chris Conde

LMH Health is pictured in a file photo from October 2018.

LMH Health’s emergency department will be one of a group nationwide — and the only one in Kansas — to start a new initiative offering patients and visitors the opportunity to register to vote.

The program, called VotER, is voluntary and nonpartisan, and was introduced to LMH Health by Kristin Salmans, president of the Lawrence/Douglas County League of Women Voters. It is fully online and will be promoted in the emergency department via posters.

Salmans said the three most common groups of nonemergency visitors to emergency departments were people of color, the poor and the young, three groups who are also less likely to vote.

“It’s exciting to be able to get people more civically engaged,” Salmans said.

Visitors must have a phone to access VotER and can either get connected by scanning a QR code or by texting a number listed on the posters. The program does not require staff involvement in voter registration. VotER does not endorse a particular party, tell patients whom to vote for, coerce patients into registering to vote or make statements that would cause patients to believe they will not receive care unless they register.

VotER originated in Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital and is now a partnership program between that hospital’s emergency department and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

photo by: LMH Health

Example of a VotER poster that will go up in LMH Health.