Another trans candidate in Ohio faces disqualification vote for omitting deadname
A second transgender candidate running for a seat in the Republican-majority Ohio House is at risk of being disqualified from the ballot after omitting her former name on circulating petitions.
The Mercer County Board of Elections is set to vote Thursday on whether Arienne Childrey, a Democrat from Auglaize County and one of four transgender individuals campaigning for the Legislature, is eligible to run after not disclosing her previous name, also known as her deadname, on her petition paperwork.
A little-used Ohio elections law, unfamiliar even to many state elections officials, mandates that candidates disclose any name changes in the last five years on their petitions paperwork, with exemptions for name changes due to marriage. But the law isn’t listed in the 33-page candidate requirement guide and there is no space on the petition paperwork to list any former names.
Really sounds like we just found some old ass rule on the books and we're using it to discriminate against trans people specifically.
I mean, it makes sense to me. Whether you are trans or not, I feel like people voting for you should be aware if you have changed your name so they can do some googling and make sure you didn't get into any controversy or shenanigans before you changed your name.
Sure they are specifically using this law to target this person because they disagree with their way of life, but it's an old law and was passed for reasons before trans issues were even prevalent so the law itself isn't transphobic.
Using your logic, explain the exception for marriage.
Because an exception to that was taken into account long before now, and trans people were not.
But just because the people that drafted this law didn't write out an exception for deadnames doesn't mean it's inherently transphobic. This was hardly a major topic in the public discourse when these laws were made.
Again, a law that requires voters have transparency is a good thing overall. It needs updated, yes, but the problem here is how it's being used as a tool to abuse. The law is to prevent fraud, but no fraud is being committed.
The dead name requirement isn't the issue. There is no way to provide that info, the requirement to provide tha info isn't documented, and they are attempting to disqualify her over it. The actual fuck?
Exactly, if this was a genuine mistake they’d present opportunities to rectify it and try to ensure it doesn’t happen in the future. The law probably wasn’t meant specifically to hurt trans people but the implementation clearly is.
That didn't actually answer my question.
The poster says that this law makes sense because voters need to be able to research their candidates. The exception for marriage contradicts that logic - do we not need to research married people? I want to see how they square that circle is all.
It's more that it's trying to catch people who've changed their names for political purposes.
People who got married and changed their name notionally didn't do so for political purposes, and are therefore excluded from having to report.
It's not that it's to provide blanket history on every candidate for research purposes. It's a catch to ferret out those who would abuse the name change process to avoid accountability. This gives the public the ability to know if that is occuring.
me on my way to do crimes before getting married so I dont have to declare my name change when running for congress or whatever
Exactly. Thank you. People change their name when they get married all the time. Are we to believe someone would be barred from the ballot if they get married between the petition and the ballot?
Arent marriage certificates public, but not sure if they show your original name or just new one
All name changes are. Judges do them so they fall under the public record. I’m sure you can get yours sealed if you can prove that you’re in danger, but without a restraining order it’s highly unlikely
You need to legally change your name, so that should be public as well.
Not in every state. California has a "confidential" marriage license that isn't public. We chose that one to stay off mailing lists.
Because an exception for that was taken into account long before now, and trans people were not.
But just because the people that drafted this law didn't write out an exception for deadnames doesn't mean it's inherently transphobic. This was hardly a major topic in the public discourse when these laws were made.
Again, a law that requires voters have transparency is a good thing overall. It needs updated, yes, but the problem here is how it's being used as a tool to abuse. The law is to prevent fraud, but no fraud is being committed.
I think where the communication is failing here is partly because intent vs effect. Were the people intending to hurt trans people when the law was written? It’s unlikely. Did it? That’s arguable for basically any time before 2015ish, it did create a dangerous and uncomfortable barrier between trans people and serving in the state legislature but it was by no means the biggest until recently. The most influence we had on politics in the 80s was dying, rioting, and when politicians became regular johns. But today’s implementation? They’ve burned every benefit of the doubt and all that remains is that there’s a slim chance some of these people are only enforcing this rule so strictly because she’s a democrat.
For public office I'm not entirely sure there should be an exception. I'm not sure why there is, other than people might say it's unfair to women who are the most likely to have had a name change and it's an extra burden than most men won't need to do.
If a man changed his name for marriage I would like to be aware before voting as well.
So as not to be accused of discriminating against women, who most frequently change name due to marriage.
But that doesn't fulfill the stated reasoning i.e. the law makes sense because voters need to be able to research candidates. Do married women not have lives before marriage? Of course they do, but the law seems to treat their premarital life as completely separate.
Here's what I think: the law may not have been intended to exclude trans folk, but it's definitely sexist, and the intersection of transphobia and sexism can't be ignored.
The law doesn't make sense either, because name changes are public record anyway.
Well, when voters see that her husband has the same last name, it becomes pretty obvious she changed her name at marriage.
The law was passed in 1995, before anyone knew what a deadname was. And I do not see it as sexist, especially when the only reason women change names more than men is specifically excluded.
Just because it’s public record (and even then sometimes you can get records sealed) does not mean the information is easily accessible.
The discussion around deadnaming and necessary or legal record keeping is kind of ongoing, but that's not what's happening here.
The point of rules like this is to dissuade deceptive name changes but there's no reason to view this particular case as deceptive. That's why it's going up for review and not disqualifying them immediately. Ideally, Congress would recognize this case doesn't fit the spirit of that rule and both allow them to campaign while simultaneously setting a precedent or rewriting the rule to exclude deadnames.
As to whether that'll actually happen, and how fair and impartial the review will be, I think we can all guess it won't be.
It's an understandable rule, but this is dishonest enforcement of it.
Yuo didn't actually explain why marriage should be an exception, though. Why is it understandable? People do marry to get into certain families or escape baggage. It's less common today but it happens.
But the original law still exempts name change by marriage . To me it feels like name changes not on official public record should be the target, as in a deliberate pseudonym. Still, what fits under that umbrella? Your twitter handle, if it isn't your legal name would fit, but no one included that since the law was written.
I'm not sure that's their logic in this case. Has this been used to disqualify cisgender candidates? Is there precedent for this in the last decade?
I wouldn't think so, especially with how common it is for people of Anglo culture to use a "non-official" name on official documents (in my experience, which is something I never saw with clients of other cultures).
This is a perfect opportunity for you to go do some research to see if it was known some cis-candidate changed their name and they weren't removed the ballot.
Short of that, declaring unfairness against trans people doesn't hold much water.
And that being said, people are always looking for a way to disqualify their opponents, and so in sure it's standard practice to look to see if they've violated this law to get them removed.
Although, IIRC, it you changed your name because of marriage, that doesn't count. So either they have to allow name changes from transitions to be exempt, or include name changes because of marriages to make the law fair, imo.
I see where you're coming from but your version of fair seems to only disproportionately affect women rather than men. Not as many men change their name due to marriage as do women.
I strongly disagree with the implication that just because it affects one group more than another, that makes it inherently suspect. Is there more to the argument?
I guess not, but I think you and I have very different definitions for fair.
I think we both agree that if something intentionally targets one group over another in an attempt to treat them unfairly, that is unfair. Where I think we differ is that if something doesn't target some group specifically, but it just happens to affect one group more than another, then I don't see that as unfair and you, if I interpret your position correctly, see that as a unfair.
However, I suspect I can find a case you would disagree with. Like men are more violent, so laws that punish violence are going to, imo completely fairly, disproportionately affect men. Are laws that punish violence unfair?
The crux of your argument about "make sure you didn't get into any controversy" is baked into the name change process...
https://uclawreview.org/2021/10/01/name-changes-do-we-need-judicial-discretion/
Ohio in particular is one such a state that requires you to publish the name change in the newspaper
https://www.ohiolegalhelp.org/topic/name-change
I had to go through this in NY, it sounds like roughly the same process. It's the biggest pain in the ass and ended up costing around $600 or so?
That was almost a decade and like six apartments ago, and I still get spam sent to me under my dead name in the mail
Because so many read and have free access to search old legal notices in newspapers.
If you want to argue name changes are public, they should be placed in a publicly searchable database.
You ever heard of a library?
Yes, because voters should have to go a library and pour over old newspapers just to know who they are voting for.
You mean like this?
That doesn’t go back very far, and the name changes get very lost on all the public bids, foreclosures, and what not.
It is filterable.
And it only goes back 1 month.
Which is what the campaign trail is for. This isn't an application to take a seat, it's a petition to run. Ask yourself how you as a voter have ever interacted with one of these forms.
I understand you aren't defending this action, but theorizing about rational historical uses for this, even uses well outside this incident, only serve to add to the cloud of false rationality that bigots will wrap themselves in to defend this BS.
The old ass rule has a legitimate purpose, but this isn't it.
Ding ding ding!
The one it originally happened to has a father who is a conservative politician in the state and likely wanted to avoid the hit to his own numbers from people knowing about his child.
When people pointed out it wasn't enforced, someone was going to use it for everyone else too
I'm going with Hanlon's Razor on this one and assuming this is just a really stupid bureaucratic failure where a form doesn't have a box for required info that it doesn't tell you is required. Curious if there are similar examples for name changes by cis people, which I wouldn't expect to be newsworthy. Regardless it needs to be fixed.
No, the person you replied to hit the nail on the head.
Believe me, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case, and I 100% think this is wrong.
My take here is that filling out a government form and having it be rejected because you didn't put required information that isn't stated as required into a box that the form doesn't have and getting denied/made to redo it is an extremely plausible scenario. In the case of a cis person being denied this way, it's a mundane bit of bureaucratic nonsense that nobody would blink an eye at.
The article states:
The fact that this law has been identified as a real problem for trans people and that there is a quote in the article from the (Republican) governor saying "this is bad, we should fix it" strikes me as acknowledgement that this dumb rule is disproportionately affecting trans people and should be fixed.
We have a depressing number of real examples of malicious use of the law against trans people, so all I'm saying is that this one doesn't seem worth getting fired up about unless there is evidence of actual malicious intent here.
It's never been used before.
Hanlon's razor is stupid. What makes you think it's a good rule?
not really. i read into this a bit, and realllly this is people choosing to fight a losing a battle while attempting a war.
this person could have played by [their] rules, and achieved some success in that arena. instead, they chose to not perform due diligence and/or draw a line in the sand preventing any success. they are losing the good through the the chase of perfect.
this is the second person ive seen who is not seeing that they could achieve something big later, if they play by the 'silly' rules now.
if you want to achieve something in government youre going to have to make compromises to get there.
Make sure you didn't miss what they actually had to say about it.
ill try!
It isn't that they don't want to list previous names it's that the law was buried and not made apparent to the candidate. It wasn't on the candidate requirement guide, the petition has no space for former names, many people weren'teven aware of the law's existence.
While I don't disagree with the law in theory (listing previous names in normal for things like background checks) it's clear this law was dug up specifically to try to disqualify the candidate in bad faith.