Health provider AltaMed takes on active, innovative role to get voters to the polls

Anaheim resident Tracy DuMouchelle recently walked into a health clinic to get her son a dental check-up.

She walked out a registered voter.

At AltaMed Health Services’ 52 clinics in Los Angeles and Orange County, a voter registration drive is just part of an expanding get-out-the-vote campaign targeting Latinos and others who live in the clinics’ surrounding low-income neighborhoods.

The organization began a more aggressive push before the June election in parts of Los Angeles County and is expanding it to Orange County beginning Monday.

Latinos make up about 34 percent of California’s adult population, but just 18 percent of so-called “likely” voters, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

“The narrative that Latinos are not interested, or a ‘sleeping giant,’ is false.  It’s that no one has taken the time to reach out to them,” said Jennie Carreon, who is spearheading the AltaMed campaign.

“We haven’t been part of the conversation or the process,” she said.

RELATED STORY: In the age of Trump, reaching Latino voters hits all angles as midterms approach

The campaign made a difference in the June primary election, according to an analysis by the new Latino Policy & Politics Initiative at UCLA.

In 96 precincts canvassed the weekend before the election, for example, there was a 137 percent jump in the number of ballots cast: 25,321 ballots, compared to the 14,622 ballots cast at those same precincts in June 2014, according to the report. And in some precincts, while the overall numbers remained small, the upsurge was much higher, with one precinct in South Gate producing the highest percentage increase: 378 votes, compared to 71 in 2014, or an increase of 432 percent.

The reason it worked in L.A., Carreon said, is because people who otherwise didn’t know about the June election were contacted repeatedly and in different ways.

It takes what Carreon calls “five touches” to have “an authentic conversation with people.”

“We’ll reach you with two phone calls, one knock on the door, a letter to your home and when you go to a clinic, you’ll see an ad in the waiting room and a message in the doctor’s (examination) room.”

The non-profit health provider opened a campaign office in Commerce with 20 temporary employees – 40 by Monday, plus volunteers – making calls in Spanish and English to low-propensity voters and knocking on doors within a five mile radius of each clinic.  Other full-time employees do civic engagement work year-round, some under a newly created AltaMed civic engagement department.

As the election nears, patients calling to make an appointment will hear messages encouraging them to vote. And when they are at a clinic, reminders to vote will pop up on TVs in the waiting room and computers in doctors’ exam rooms. Patients also will get text message reminders in both languages, along with a voter’s guide in the mail and invitations to attend community gatherings. And if they need a ride on Election Day, they’ve got one.

While the focus is on neighborhoods, AltaMed workers also are going to schools, including East Los Angeles College, Cal State Fullerton, Cal State San Bernardino and Santa Ana Community College.

UCLA Prof. Matt Barreto, faculty director of the Latino Policy & Politics Initiative that analyzed the Latino vote in the last June election, called its approach “extremely innovative and groundbreaking. It can serve as a model for other community organizations.”

AltaMed has for years participated in citizenship drives, voter-registration campaigns and community programs. What originally started as the East L.A. Barrio Free Clinic, the non-profit organization founded in 1969 now treats more than 300,000 patients annually in its clinics and pharmacies.

“Having people involved in civic issues in their own community …(is) tied together to the issues of wellness and health, hunger and poverty,” said Cástulo de la Rocha, AltaMed’s president and CEO, who’s been with the organization since the beginning.

None of the campaigning involves politicking for any one candidate or political party, de la Rocha said.  That’s not allowed under it’s non-profit’s 501(C)3 status. But the government funded organization has a 501(C)4 action fund, which it now uses to endorse propositions.

Of California Latinos who are registered, more than half are Democrats while 30 percent are no party preference, according to Political Data Inc. The UCLA-affiliated report showed that the increased Latino vote in the June primary “shifted countywide voting patterns to be more heavily Democratic than (in) 2014.”

On Wednesday morning, at AltaMed Health Services clinics in Anaheim, project intern Cynthia Zepeda stayed away from politics and asked patients simply whether she could register them to vote. Most said no, either because they weren’t eligible or because they were registered already. On a good morning, Zepeda said she registers about 10 new voters.

DuMouchelle, who brought her 7-year-old to get his teeth cleaned and see a dentist, was surprised and pleased with Zepeda’s question.  She had moved to Anaheim a few years ago and hadn’t yet registered in Orange County

“This is super convenient,” she said as the registration was completed.

Under AltaMed’s campaign plan, she will likely hear from them again before Election Day—several times more.