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.
I have a feeling she will be successful if they DQ her and she challenges it. Interacting with the bureaucracy of the state we are expected to do what reasonable people would do to comply with the rules and regs, such as follow the directions on the forms provided and follow instructions from officials.
It’s unreasonable to expect a person to go digging for extra rules and extra regulations if there is no indication they might exist.
If the form had a place for aliases or prior names, then it would be ok to disqualify anyone who left out a previous name. If there were instructions to provide a list of previous names in a separate document, it would be ok to disqualify. Hell, if the person handing over the document or the website you download it from specifically stated that all previous names shall be disclosed, it would be ok to disqualify.
Most financial documents, for example, specifically ask for that. A lot of government identification applications (passports, drivers licenses, etc) ask for that. So when one encounters a form that doesn’t ask for that, there’s no reason to suspect that it’s necessary.
A good lawyer will have her on the ballot no problem.
You know how this is stopped? Good people need to replace those on the board of elections and other positions. This is what Republicans are doing (but with bad people) with great success, while those on the left or opting out, discouraging participation, and guaranteeing loss.
For some reason, half of Lemmy is so confident that waiting (because doing anything more than reading and talking shit on LIBS! doesn’t actually occur) for a massive war between the East and West where hundreds of millions die and whole ecosystems are destroyed is easier and more likely to be successful than voting that they won’t even cast a ballot.
Imagine thinking, “oh, voting won’t work, running for office won’t work, sorry my minority “friends”, I’m not gonna do something as difficult as grocery shopping for you because I’m certain what’s best for you and others like you is to suffer die while I wait for something that’s probably not going to happen.”
To those who think voting or running for office won’t matter, ask yourself why Republicans fight so hard to limit voting and keep people like this candidate out of office?
I do see a lot of justified Lib hate on here, but a lot of the complaints I have seen on Lemmy have the complainer claiming that they do begrudgingly vote for the dems, despite the criticism. I am not a fan of Biden at all, and I think there are tons of better candidates for the job, but I will still vote for him when I am forced to choose between that and Trump.
Just because people criticize the Dems, doesn’t mean that they completely opt out of the voting process.
Those who begrudgingly vote and work to solve problems outside elections the rest of the year are making the wise choice.
I’m not really speaking to those who vote I’m speaking to those who think forfeiting their vote and expecting revolution any day now. Those unwilling to cast a vote in an attempt to protect the vulnerable because they feel entitled to use other’s lives to further their goals.
I’m speaking to tankies, ideological puritans that saw the U.S. kool-aid and were not fooled, but then turned around and drank kool-aid from autocrats pretending to be communists.
At the risk of being dogpiled, I’d like to try to have some discussion on this.
Up front, I want to say that Ohio does a lot of dumb shit, trans rights are human rights, and weaponizing random laws against queer people is bullshit.
It seems clear to me that:
- There is a reasonable motivation for requiring reporting of recent name changes, and the exception for marriage is due to this being extremely common. The article states that this usually came up in the past when people wanted to run with a nickname rather than their given name.
- Not stating this requirement on the form is stupid and bad.
- This is compounded by the lack of a box for a former name, practically guaranteeing that this information is omitted.
- All of this is a problem that should be fixed. The Republic governor has acknowledged this, according to a quote from the article.
What isn’t clear to me is that this is selectively enforced against trans people. We only know about the cases where it has happened to trans people because those are the cases that are being reported on. It is not surprising that a cis person encountering a bureaucratic annoyance because they put the name they go by rather than their birth name on the form was not considered newsworthy.
The vibe I get from this is that this is ragebait where the headline invites the reader to jump to conclusions while the contents of the article suggest that this is actually just a stupid case of the government being bad at making a form (something I have personally encountered a lot).
I’m totally fine with being proven wrong, it wouldn’t be surprising in the slightest if there is malicious intent here. Is there evidence of selective enforcement here?
Yes there is evidence. Just a few days ago a third trans candidate in Ohio ran into the same problem and their board of elections overturned the rejection during their appeal.
So this year you’ve had 3 trans candidates with the same problem. 2 upheld and 1 overturned during the appeals process.
Yep. Third bullet point would solve the issue entirely
I agree. This seems like a prime example of a base rate fallacy.
If all 4 transgender candidates ran afoul of this law, and none of the cisgender candidates did, it’s reasonable to think that it might be an anti-trans law. But, that ignores the base rate of name changes. Probably about 1% of non-trans people change their names, or use names different from their official names when submitting paperwork to get onto a ballot other than women who take a married name – but there’s an explicit carve-out for that because it’s so common. Probably about 99% of trans people change their names or use different names in that same situation. The rate of name changes between the two groups is massively different, so one group is going to encounter the issue much, much more often.
In the past, when trans people simply didn’t try to run for office, this wouldn’t come up very often, so nobody paid much attention to the badly designed forms, etc. But, now a new group of people is starting to run for office, and this group encounters the problem nearly 100% of the time.
And, while it’s also possible to think this might be an old law that’s now being weaponized by the other party against trans people, the article shows that they can’t do that:
Earlier this month, the board received a protest to Childrey’s ballot certification from Mercer County Republican Party Chairman Robert J. Hibner. Because the ballot is for the upcoming March 19 primary, the board ruled Hibner’s protest invalid, as Hibner is from the opposing political party.
There may still be prejudice at play, that trans candidates are under more scrutiny than a white cis male who wanted to go by Jimbo and not James. But, IMO incompetence / bugs in the system is probably a bigger part of the problem.
Would you make a divorced woman use her ex husband’s last name when running for office? Same difference.
That would fall under the exemption due to marriage too, I expect. She should just marry her dog
The point of the law is to prevent things like someone surreptitiously changing their name right before they run for office. E.g. to the same name as another candidate.
It’s all about transparency and preventing dirty election tricks. It was probably created long before the current slate of right wing transphobia
A woman who gets divorced and changes her name is exactly the type of situation that could be artificially manufactured in order to swing an election. For example, if she had the same name as a popular candidate/person (even elsewhere in the US!) before she got married.
Dang whats in the water in Ohio? . . . Oh right vinyl chloride from freight train accidents.
Hey, Ohio lawmakers: Get Fucked.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Removed by mod
Fuck off.
Removed by mod
Sounds like another case of “i didn’t read the rules, so it’s not my fault”. Ignorance of the law doesn’t change the law. And it’s not a law “aimed” at trans people. It’s been around far longer than this ‘movement’ has.
As per the excerpt of the article in this post:
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.
So it seems to me that it’s a law that in practice bans running within five years of (non marriage) name changes. Whether it’s unevenly enforced or not it clearly hits trans people disproportionately.
The “Law” is still on the books. It sucks, but again,Ignorance of the Law doesn’t make it not the Law. Now that it’s getting publicity, maybe people can start following the rules.
It’s nearly impossible to follow the rules when they are specifically being hidden. No one can keep track of every single rule off the top of their head. That’s why we have things like speed limit signs or no parking signs. Hours of operation for a business clearly posted. Etc.
This law is the equivalent of a road going from 55mph to 35mph, but never telling you with a speed limit sign. Then you get pulled over for speeding because the cop knows it’s 35, but fuck you, go to jail, because you expected there to be a speed limit sign when the speed changed, you know. Like on every other road ever.
The fact that there are 33 pages of outlined rules for this when applying says they intentionally put those rules together so people would follow them. It’s not fair for me to know some obscure rule is missing from the 33 pages of rules specifically supplied for me to follow. That is called deception.
They set an expectation by supplying 33 pages of rules. “Here are all the rules” by leaving one out, you’re intentionally trying to fuck people up with it.
Then there being no place to even put a previous name on the form is just fuckery on top.
“Sorry you wrote you previous name on a part of the paper that wasn’t designated for that, so now we have to disqualify you for following the law. Sorry, it’s just the law /shrug”
Again. I’ve said it numerous times. It doesn’t matter. I’m not defending it or even saying it’s “right”. It’s the way it is and if you want in the club you have to play by their rules. They make it this way on purpose. So play by their rules, get in the club and change the rules. But until then, it’s not going to change. So do the due diligence and play the game by the rules. The law is there.
If the official paperwork makes it impossible to follow the law, how then can these people run for office? If the law is on the books, then the forms should be made to include this option. That it doesn’t is akin to entrapment.
I’m not saying it’s “right”, I’m saying if you want to do it, you have to play by their rules. That’s all there is too it.
