Biden's Executive Order encourages expanded voter registration at health centers in Kansas
Biden's Executive Order encourages expanded voter registration at health centers in Kansas
Online resources direct voters to progressive voter registration and get-out-the-vote sites
Updated June 11, 2024.
President Biden’s Executive Order, “Promoting Access to Voting,” in March 2021 directed federal agencies to expand access to, and provide education about, voter registration and election information.
The government Health Resources & Services Administration’s page gives details about what this means at health centers:
Health centers have discretion, to the extent permitted by applicable law, to support non-partisan voter registration efforts as a means of reducing barriers to civic engagement within the communities they serve. However, Health Center Program grant funding made available to provide health services to medically underserved populations under section 330 of the Public Health Service Act cannot be used to support voter registration efforts. In addition, there are other potentially applicable federal and state laws that may apply …
Subject to compliance with such laws, health centers have discretion to participate in activities, including voter registration activities, that are outside the scope of the Health Center Program project, so long as the health centers’ efforts in carrying out the Health Center Program project are not impaired.
Commentary in an Aug. 2023 article in Health Service Research promoted “Expanding voter registration to clinical settings to improve health equity.”
Community healthcare centers (CHCs), including organizations designated as Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and Health Center Program look-alikes (LALs), are also included under EO 14019. Serving more than 28 million patients, CHCs are especially equipped to empower politically disadvantaged individuals. Roughly 62% of patients are members of racial and ethnic minority groups, 90% are at or below the 200% federal poverty level, and 24% are best served in a language other than English. CHCs are also uniquely situated to promote community empowerment. They are located in medically underserved areas; they offer comprehensive healthcare services; they are open to anyone regardless of insurance status or ability to pay; and they have patient-majority governing boards.
In general, Biden’s Executive Order required federal government offices to ignore their primary mission and spend some time and resources on voter and election activities.
Community Care Network of Kansas
The nonprofit Community Care Network of Kansas is the federally-designated Primary Care Association in the state. There are 32 member health centers and community clinics in this network serving Kansans.
This article will discuss CCNK’s online resources for voter registration at its affiliated clinics. The number of clinics participating in voter registration activities using these resources in 2022 is not known.
Under “Events” on their main page, select “Community Care Clinic Week”. Under “Member Resources” there is a link to “Voter Engagement Resources” and a button to click for their Voter Engagement Guide.
Voter Engagement Guide
Two of the sections of this Guide are:
Resources for Clinics Conducting Voter Engagement Activates
Resources for Kansas Voters
This Guide was in place by July 2022 for the August 2022 primary and was updated for the Nov. 2022 general election.
Resources for Clinics Conducting Voter Engagement Activities
This section highlighted resources for clinics conducting voter registration activities, including a link to VotER Resources. That page gives details about a badge VotER provides with a QR code, as well as information about how VotER track voters who are registered.
Addition information about VotER is in this recent WatchdogLab article.
Registrations and ballot requests through VotER are handled through turbovote.org, which is a product of the progressive nonprofit Democracy Works.
TurboVote.org is a national site with functionality like the KSVotes.org web site (see below).
Resources for Kansas Voters
This section of the CCNK Voter Guide introduces election resources provided by Kansas-based progressive nonprofits, The Voter Network and KSVotes.org (aka Blueprint Kansas).
For the August 2022 primary there was a section about The Voter Network and its KSBallot.org project.
A link to 2022 Voter Network Toolkit at The Voter Network showed a focus on the Value Them Both referendum last year.
Healthcare nonprofits have spent over $1 million on The Voter Network, and its two projects, KSBallot.org and Voter-to-Voter “Peer Pressure with a Purpose.” [The same healthcare nonprofits spent millions on a multi-year Integrated Voter Engagement project.]
The Voter Network claims 2500 volunteer ambassadors in 92 Kansas Counties with 34,000 voter contacts. They have not responded to questions about who else might be using their data and online ballots they collect.
The Voter Network, “peer pressure with a purpose,” has huge funding from non-profit health foundations
KSVotes.org allows voters to register or request mail ballots online. This is a progressive “nonprofit in the middle” between voters and Kansas elections offices.
Few visitors to their site know the page is run by a progressive nonprofit, Blueprint Kansas. Only the copyright at the bottom of the web page discloses that information. BlueprintKansas.org now automatically redirects to facebook.com/KSVote.org.
The Wayback Machine shows the original blueprintkansas.org page from Jan. 5, 2018, but has never shown their board of directors. Current directors include: Brian McClendon (Democratic candidate for Kansas Secretary of State in 2018), Jameson Shew (Democratic County Clerk in Douglas County), and Patrick Miller (former KU political science professor, a Republican, who left for Kent State in Aug. 2023).
From 2017-2022 progressive nonprofits spent about $700,000 to develop and maintain the KSVotes.org.
There is a progressive “nonprofit in the middle” between a growing number of voters and election offices in Kansas
On their web site, Community Care Network of Kansas joins a number of Democratic Party organizations and progressive nonprofits in directing voters to KSVotes.org for voter registrations and mail ballot requests.
KSVotes.org publishes statistics that they have registered nearly 86,000 voters and processed over 105,000 advance mail ballot applications since 2017. They do not disclose who else might be using their data.
In 2021 progressive nonprofits in Kansas were ready to benefit from the fallout of Biden’s Executive Order.
Related
Leftist nonprofit, ‘Bidenbucks’ pushing voter registration of low-income patients at health centers, Just the News, Natalia Mittelstadt, May 14, 2024.
Leftist Nonprofit, ‘Bidenbucks’ Pushing Voter Registration of Low-Income Patients at Health Centers in Ohio, The Ohio Star, May 16, 2024.
How Mass Mail-In Voting Changes Everything, William Doyle, The American Conservative, Dec. 26,2023.
Mass mail-in voting is not a voting rights matter. It is a matter of greatly expanding the power of leftist nonprofits and partisan election activists to manipulate elections and determine outcomes. Elections should reflect the will of actual voters, rather than the agendas of partisan nonprofit donors, and the fetishes of well funded election activists.
There were about 243,000 newly registered voters in Kansas in 2020! So, the 277,000 voter registration application forms was huge. Who paid for the postage?
Loud Light, Demos, and ACLU-KS twisted the Governor's arm to register 277,000 before 2020 election