Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia installed online voter registration kiosks in its emergency department this month to help boost the number of registered voters in the state, reports Philly Mag.
Hospital patients, visitors or employees can use the kiosks to check their registration status and register to vote.
At present, about 12 percent of eligible voters in Pennsylvania are not registered to vote. Many of these individuals come from underserved populations and often face various socioeconomic challenges that are directly affected by public policy. As a result of these challenges, many unregistered voters end up in Einstein Medical Center's ED.
The kiosks are part of an initiative called VotER, which was first launched at Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital last year. The initiative stems from a partnership between the hospital, Cambridge-based Harvard Kennedy School, a nonprofit called Turbovote and the behavioral sciences company Ideas42.
So far, Einstein Medical Center is among only a handful of hospitals in the country to install the kiosks.