Voting Is Social Work: Voter Empowerment and the National Social Work Voter Mobilization Campaign

by Terry Mizrahi, Ph.D., and Mimi Abramovitz, DSW

(Editor's Note: The New Social Worker is pleased to endorse the National Social Worker Voter Mobilization Campaign, also known as #VotingIsSocialWork. Dr. Terry Mizrahi was the guest expert of the #MacroSW Twitter chat on 9/27/18 at 9 p.m. Eastern to discuss the campaign.)

     Voting is the hallmark of a democracy. Yet, the voting gap deepened during the last 30 years as court decisions, voter suppression laws, and gerrymandering intentionally eroded the hard-won franchise, especially among marginalized Black Americans. Alexander Keyssar (2009) documents this in the book The Right to Vote. The social work profession is fighting back.

Voting is Social Work

    Social workers have always understood the importance of voting to political action, community power, and social change. Since its founding in 1955, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) has promoted open access to the ballot box. (See “Voting Rights and Voter Participation” in the NASW publication Social Work Speaks and the related article in the Encyclopedia of Social Work online, 2013).

    In 1983, Richard Cloward, a prominent social worker, and Frances Fox Piven launched The Human SERVE campaign to increase voter registration among clients at public and nonprofit agencies. In 1993, their efforts, supported by many allies, paid off with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), better known as the “Motor Voter Act.” Under this law, states now permit people to register to vote when they get or renew drivers’ licenses or when they apply for food stamps and other government benefits. Access to information at these new venues vastly expanded voter registration.

    Social workers participate in political activities in higher numbers (Rome & Hoechstatter, 2010) and vote at higher rates than other professions (Halvor, 2016). We do so for many reasons. It is in our professional DNA; our professional organizations endorse voter registration, and data show that voter engagement advances individual well-being, civic participation, and social justice (Martin & Claibourn, 2013). We also do it because we can. Our field work departments and social agencies have access to millions of highly under-represented clients, constituencies, and communities, including those most likely to be targeted by voter suppression and gerrymandering laws.

From the Field: Surprise and Concern in 2016

    Did social work agencies engage clients in the 2016 presidential election? Not very many! MSW students in one urban social work school assessed the voter education activities at 65 different agencies. While 22% of the agencies were engaged in proactive and creative activities, 62% did little or nothing to promote client engagement.

Why Some Agencies Were Not Engaged

    The non-engaged agencies claimed that 1) undocumented, formerly incarcerated, and/or homeless clients could not vote, 2) clients only sought services that helped them get better, 3) agencies lacked the resources needed to prioritize voting, and occasionally 4) that it wasn’t professional and legal. One student placed in a non-engaged school setting observed: “We were often told that the students were too young to vote. This might be true, but it’s not too early to teach children about the election and voting registration process. These voter activities can also be used by the school to involve parents to vote and participate in other empowering ways.” Rocha, Poe, and Thomas (2010) report on some of the perceived barriers to political participation.

The Practice Wisdom of Engaged Agencies

     In contrast, the engaged agencies provided important practice lessons. A youth-serving agency provided clients with voter registration information, registered qualified participants, and regularly discussed the upcoming election with them. Another program defined and educated underage youth participants as future voters and helped older youth to register to vote. A residential treatment center organized workshops for clients where they discussed the electoral process, emphasized the importance of voting, and distributed registration forms and local polling place addresses. Another agency organized a community forum: “Why Should I Vote When I Don’t Like the Candidates?” A high school for older students created a step-by-step voting guide, provided the social work interns access to classrooms to ask students if they were registered, helped students fill out forms, and discussed campaign issues following the televised debates. At a community-based agency in a school that served as an election-day polling place, students engaged voters waiting in line by providing snacks along with voter education. This youth agency also gained considerable visibility and support for this creative effort.

The Impact of Voter Empowerment

    Communities that vote receive more attention and more resources from legislators than communities with low voter turnout (Martin & Claibourn, 2013). Voting is also associated with higher levels of health and mental health, stronger social connections, better employment outcomes, and the opportunity to voice opinions and a greater sense of efficacy (Ballard & Syme, 2016). Clearly. such civic engagement is good for what ails the country today.

About the National Social Work Voter Mobilization Campaign

    Formed in Winter 2018, the non-partisan National Social Work Voter Mobilization Campaign built on an initiative that was started in 2016 by the Nancy Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work at the University of Connecticut, Influencing Social Policy, and CRISP (Congressional Research Institute for Social Work and Policy). Now, the largely volunteer campaign hopes to integrate voter engagement activities into all corners of social work education.

    To this end, the campaign connects voting to social work practice; refutes myths that discourage social workers from registering voters; and trains field instructors, agency leaders, faculty, students, and administrators to register and mobilize students and clients.

    The campaign has many endorsements from lead social work organizations. They include the Council on Social Work Education, National Association of Deans and Directors, North American Network of Field Educators and Directors, many NASW state chapters, Special Commission to Advance Macro Practice in Social Work, Network for Social Work Management, Association for Community Organization and Social Administration, #MacroSW, the Latino Social Work Organization, the National Rural Social Work Caucus, and The New Social Worker, among others. The list keeps growing.

What You Can Do to Enhance the Vision and Voice of Disproportionately Disenfranchised Populations

• Alert social work colleagues that non-partisan voter mobilization is legal, professional, and important (Rome, Hoechstetter, & Wolf-Branigin, 2010). The IRS identifies a range of acceptable non-partisan practices for tax exempt organizations Electioneering for specific parties or candidates is prohibited.
• Assist clients and constituencies who need extra guidance in registering to vote and getting to the polls—especially people who are mentally ill, elderly, and ex-offenders in most states. (See Nonprofit Vote at https://www.nonprofitvote.org or League of Women Voters at http://www.lwv.org.)
• Micro students can help clients to obtain the necessary state identification and to use a simple online registration site, such as turbovote.org or vote.org.
• Macro students can introduce agency policy change, develop spread-the-word community campaigns, and organize “people to the polls” (McElwee, 2015).
• Agency decision-makers can add the following question to their intake forms: “If you are an American citizen, are you registered to vote?”
• Anyone can invite all candidates running for office in their agency’s district to discuss their policy proposals that promote social justice, human rights, and equal opportunity.
• Go to the www.votingissocialwork.org website, find useful resources, and choose one or more ways to “pledge to participate.”
• Join the National Social Worker Voter Mobilization Facebook group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/201547280473138/

References

Ballard, P., & Syme, S.L. (2016). Engaging youth in communities: A framework for promoting adolescent and community health. Journal of Epidemiological Community Health. 70 (2), 202-206.

Fox Piven, F., & Minnite, L. (2013). Voter participation. Encyclopedia of Social Work. Retrieved November 14, 2017.

Halvor, C.D.B. (2016). Increasing social work students’ political interest and efficacy. Journal of Policy Practice 15 (4), 289-313.

Keyssar, A. (2009). The right to vote: The contested history of democracy in the United States. Revised Edition. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Martin, P. S., & Claibourn, M. P. (2013). Citizen participation and congressional responsiveness: New evidence that participation matters. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 38 (1), 59-81.

McElwee, S (2015). For the effects of voting, look to policy, not elections. Policy Shop. http://www.demos.org/blog/3/27/15/effects-voting-look-policy-not-elections.

Rocha, C., Poe, B., & Thomas, V. (2010). Political activities of social workers: Addressing perceived barriers to political participation. Social Work, 55 (4), 317-25.

Rome, S., & Hoechstetter, S. (2010). Social work and civic engagement: Political participation of professional social workers. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare 37 (3), 107-129.

Rome, S. H., Hoechstetter, S., & Wolf-Branigin, M. (2010). Pushing the envelope: Empowering clients for political action.  Journal of Policy Practice, 9:3-4 (201-219), DOI: 10.1080/15588742.2010.487236.

Terry Mizrahi, Ph.D., is a professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. She co-chairs the National Social Work Voter Mobilization Campaign with Dr. Abramovitz and the Special Commission to Advance Macro Practice in Social Work with Dr. Darlyne Bailey.

Mimi Abramovitz, DSW, is the Bertha Capen Reynolds Professor of Social Policy at the Silberman School of social Work, Hunter College, CUNY. A scholar and activist, Dr Abramovitz writes about women, poverty, the U.S. welfare state, the impact of social policy on human service workers, and low-income women’s activism.