Another trans candidate in Ohio faces disqualification vote for omitting deadname
Another trans candidate in Ohio faces disqualification vote for omitting deadname
A second transgender candidate running for the majority Republican Ohio House could be disqualified from the ballot after omitting her former name on circulating petitions.
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.
145I 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.
45But 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.
9The crux of your argument about "make sure you didn't get into any controversy" is baked into the name change process...
A legal name change in the U.S. for any reason other than marriage or divorce typically requires several steps. First, the applicant must file paperwork that includes the reason for the name change and pay filing fees that can be hundreds of dollars. Then the applicant attends a court hearing where they may need to defend the reasons for their name change. If they are granted a court order for a name change, they will need to go through name change processes for other documents such as driver’s licenses and birth certificates, which require additional fees. Many states also require that the applicant pay to publish their name change in the newspaper, with some states requiring multiple publications.
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
3The 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.
3Whether 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.
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.
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The old ass rule has a legitimate purpose, but this isn't it.
16Ding ding ding!
10The 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
7I'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.
3not 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.
-25But 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.
38“I would have filled out whatever was necessary, because at the end of the day, while it would have been a hit to my pride, there is something much more important than my pride, and that’s fighting for this community,” Childrey said.
Make sure you didn't miss what they actually had to say about it.
28It 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.
12The candidate is running as a trans Democrat for District 84. The other case you're referring to is for District 50 which the dems didn't even contest in 2022.
If they played by the rules, they'd have both lost in a landslide and nobody would have noticed or cared. This news story is the best win they could have hoped for.
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Selectively enforcing for a certain segment of the population an unadvertised rule is total copshit
42Where do you get the idea there's selective enforcement?
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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.
36Thank you for this reasonable and informed take. A lot of folks up in arms about the identity politics issue, but the real issue is the bureaucracy is not operating in a way that aligns with the law or instructs people to comply. Corrections should be allowed by the candidates and the bureaucracy needs to update procedures.
8
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?
35I 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.
3
Would you make a divorced woman use her ex husband's last name when running for office? Same difference.
8That would fall under the exemption due to marriage too, I expect. She should just marry her dog
3The 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.
3
Dang whats in the water in Ohio? . . . Oh right vinyl chloride from freight train accidents.
5Oh it’s the Ohio legislature I’m sure they’ll follow the law and the will of the people striving to create a fair democratic government. /s
Nah they’re going to tell her no, and possibly make the law stricter because we’re their present target since their attempt to ban abortion was stopped. Oh they may attempt to gerrymander harder too, but that might not be mathematically feasible
4Hey, Ohio lawmakers: Get Fucked.
4Good.
-11Fuck off.
11Rude.
-8
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.
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