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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
The 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
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.
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.
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 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.
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 law has been in place in some form for decades, though it’s rarely been used and usually arises in the context of candidates wishing to use a nickname.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
The 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.
