When My-Linh moved from Texas to New York, they knew they wanted to vote in elections without risk of discrimination against their non-binary identity. But the only options on the form to get a state ID are male and female.
“The system set in place is very unfair, and it doesn’t give any opportunity for people who have intersectional identities to be able to feel comfortable to identify themselves,” says My-Linh.
Few states in the US have passed a law requiring voting registration forms to include an X or unspecified option for anyone who doesn’t identify as male or female. Only 18 states and Washington DC have that option when getting a driver’s license – neither Texas nor New York, where My-Linh would vote, do.
For non-binary people, as well as the transgender community as a whole, barriers to getting an appropriate ID leave hundreds of thousands people vulnerable to disenfranchisement.
In a February 2020 report, the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute estimated that 965,350 transgender people will be eligible to vote in November’s presidential election. But of the 45 states that conduct elections in person, 42% of transgender people don’t have the correct identification. These numbers don’t account for the estimated 25% to 35% of transgender people who identify as non-binary, or those who are non-binary but not transgender – which a 2014 study in the UK estimated as about 0.4% of the population.
The 2015 US Trans Survey also found that a third of the people who showed ID which didn’t match their gender presentation faced negative results such as harassment or even assault – something that can discourage transgender and non-binary people from casting a ballot.
Allison, a trans femme who had recently moved to California before the November 2016 elections, had not changed her gender marker due to the high cost of the paperwork. Though she had registered online, poll workers asked for her ID, citing their reasoning being it was her first time voting in the state which does not have strict voter ID laws. She only received a provisional ballot, meaning her vote may not have counted.
“Having to have photo identification to show up at the polls disproportionately affects our transgender populations,” says Arli Christensen, Campaign Strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union who focuses on trans justice issues. “For transgender folks, it is often very difficult to get an ID that accurately reflects who they are, has a legal name that corresponds with who they are, and has a gender marker that matches who they are.”
The high rate of inaccurate IDs doesn’t come from a lack of trying. Trans people face a complicated and expensive ordeal involving legal fees, a potential need to publish their name in the newspaper – thus outing them – and sharing invasive medical documentation. Most states, including New York, require publishing changed names in a newspaper for creditors and other interested parties. In some states gender markers can’t be changed without proof of surgery.
Earlier this year a 28-year-old transgender woman sued North Carolina and Mecklenburg county election officials after facing discrimination while voting last November. While the state doesn’t require identification for voting, the woman, who has lived as a female since the age of 14, was asked to present her ID. When asked why it was required, she said the precinct judge said: “Because your face doesn’t match your name.”
She was finally allowed to vote after over an hour but was emotionally shaken up.
These barriers become even more difficult in states with strict voter ID laws, promoted largely by Republican legislatures concerned about voter fraud – though voter fraud occurs only 0.0003% of the time. Thirty-six states have laws requesting or requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls and in 19 of these states voters are required to present photo identification, said Alphonso David, the president of the Human Rights Campaign.
“These voter ID laws are a solution in search of a problem and all they really do in the end is make it harder for people to vote,” says Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, deputy executive director for policy and action at the National Center for Transgender Equality and a transgender man.
Heng-Lehtinen was out as a transgender man and going by Rodrigo for five years before he could legally change his name. “Everyone knew me as that. That’s how I was recognized in the world, with my job, my friends, my family, everyone. But there was no government document that reflected that,” he says.
He had to go through a DMV and Social Security Administration in California before eventually reaching the California court system. The cost was about $450. Something he stresses is “extremely out of reach for many transgender people who disproportionately are more likely to work low-wage jobs”.
There’s also the impact of mass incarceration in the US. In 2015, 2% of transgender people were imprisoned in the past year, compared to 0.87% of the general population, with an even higher rate for people of color in the community. The inequality in prison sentences means losing the right to vote in states where people with felony convictions don’t have access to the ballot.
“Transgender people are disproportionately subject to discrimination, so it’s harder for us to find a job and we’re put into more desperate situations. A lot of transgender people are doing sex work or other jobs like that just to get by, which then makes us more likely to be in prison,” says Heng-Lehtinen.
With the presidential election less than six months away, advocates are hoping that some measures can be taken to make it easier for transgender and non-binary people to vote. David advocated for changing state laws to make it easier to change voter forms and IDs. Christensen said poll workers should be educated about IDs so they don’t bar someone from voting, and hoped that a national conversation would continue.
“If there’s a gender discrepancy between your ID and the way you walk through the world, that is not a reason to be denied a ballot,” said Christensen. “We need to make sure that as a community, as a society, we understand trans people. Our democracy is strongest when all people have access to vote.”
Source: Elections - theguardian.com
