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All Social Workers Can Help With Voting
By Miriam Edelman, MPA, MSW

Social workers participating in nonpartisan civic engagement can help others vote. Nonpartisan voter engagement with potential voters is legal, but 501(c)(3) nonprofits are prohibited from making endorsements, donating money, or ranking candidates based on their views. Some organizations are required to assist with voter registration.

Why Social Workers Should Help
Social workers can encourage their organizations to engage with potential voters. According to Tanya Rhodes Smith, a professor at the University of Connecticut and director of the Nancy A. Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work, social workers can make several compelling points to their offices’ management about why they should be involved in helping people vote, for example, that civic engagement can bring increased visibility, attention, and access to the organization and its clients and highlight their struggles, and that elected officials feel more accountable to voters. As Rhodes Smith says, “Being a nonvoter is isolating because campaigns generally ignore people who are not registered or haven’t voted. Communities that vote in low rates often lack the lawn signs or any information that an election is coming up.” Helping clients, staff, and individuals in the communities vote builds their political power and their ability to advocate for themselves and their communities and amplifies your impact.

How Social Workers Can Overcome Reluctance to Help
Clinical social workers should not be dissuaded from engaging with potential voters. They might believe that voter engagement is different from micro social work, or that discussing voting will detract from a client’s presenting issue. However, clients voting could lead to the development of policy that could benefit their clients. In addition, encouraging clients to vote can be a way of empowering them.

Some social workers may believe they don’t know enough to help clients with voting. But, as Rhodes Smith says, “They don’t have to be experts.” She encourages social workers to get more comfortable with voting. “Social workers who are familiar with the voting process as well as where to find resources where they live and work are more likely to be comfortable helping others to vote,” she says. She also recommends that social workers “collaborate with local elected officials and civic organizations if they are running a voter registration drive or want to know more about supporting people to vote. The rules can be complicated, and in some states like Florida, they can be punitive if you break the rules. We don't have to be the experts.”

How Social Workers Can Help
Voting is a critical social work intervention. According to Rhodes Smith, helping clients with voting involves “providing the information they need to participate in elections and the encouragement that their vote matters.” Key information that can be shared is when, where, and how to vote and along with links to nonpartisan data about candidates and issues. “Elected officials give more attention and more resources to communities that vote in higher rates, so when people stay home, it reduces the political power of their community,” she adds. Social workers should not influence how their clients vote. In other words, they must not tell others to vote for specific individual candidates, political parties, or ballot referendums. However, she says, in our personal lives we can work for campaigns.

Social workers’ activities depend on their type of social work (ie, micro, mezzo, and macro) and their offices’ rules.

On the micro and mezzo/community levels, social workers can inform their clients about voter registration, voting, and candidates. They can also ask them about their voter registration status, check their registration status at Vote.org, help those who aren’t registered to do so, and help clients register for reminders to vote at Turbovote.org. Social workers can also help clients learn about government officials, can invite elected officials to their offices, and encourage their clients to attend town hall meetings and debates.

At the mezzo/community level, social workers can empower their communities by hosting voter registration drives.

At the macro level, they can help make voting easier and attempt to stop voter suppression by advocating for the elimination of barriers to voting. Social workers also can be election workers, poll employees, and poll monitors.

Social work schools can also help with voter engagement. School personnel can ask incoming students about their voter registration status, encourage students to vote, and organize voter registration events. Social work professors can teach about voting and civics, assign projects relating to civics, and invite guest speakers. Field educators can provide field credit to students who participate in election-related activities, such as working at a poll.

By helping their clients vote, social workers may also assist their clients’ communities. As Rhodes Smith says, “Voting is also highly relational. We are more likely to vote if our family, friends, and community encourage us to vote.”

Voting Is Social Work Website
The Voting Is Social Work website, which Rhodes Smith coleads, explains the importance of voting, how social workers and students can help, and how certain populations, such as people with disabilities and non-English speakers, can vote. It provides information and numerous resources including tips for engaging voters, “Voter Engagement Strategies for Organizations” and a Voter Registration Toolkit.

Conclusion
It’s crucial that social workers are active in helping individuals vote. Voting relates to social work’s code of ethics, which states that “Social workers should be aware of the impact of the political arena on practice and should advocate for changes in policy and legislation to improve social conditions to meet basic human needs and promote social justice.” Voting activities also relate to nine Council on Social Work Education competencies. Through voting, social workers can help make policy that would greatly improves their own lives as well as those of their clients.

— Miriam Edelman, MPA, MSW, is a Washington, D.C.-based policy professional. Her experience includes policy work for both the Senate and House of Representatives. Edelman’s undergraduate degree is from Barnard College, Columbia University, where she majored in political science and urban studies and a concentration in history. She has a Master of Public Administration from Cornell University, where she was inducted into Pi Alpha Alpha, the national honorary society for public administration, and was awarded the Cornell-wide Distinguished Leadership Award. She also has a Master of Social Work (focusing on policy) from Columbia University. Edelman aims to continue her career in public service, and she’s especially interested in democracy, civic education, District of Columbia autonomy, diversity, health policy, women’s issues, Judaism, and disabilities. She serves on the Website Advisory Committee of the Voting is Social Work website.