CT Primaries Are Not Until April 26th

I was questioned once at the polling place, the guy at the door wanted to know if it was my driver license… well the picture is me, who else looks so gorgeous?

But for many trans people voting is a hassle.

How ID Laws Disenfranchise Transgender Voters
A new report examines the costs and burdens transgender citizens face in trying to comply with photo ID voter laws.
City Lab
By Brentin Mock
April 1, 2016

Part of the grand short-sightedness of voter ID laws is that they depend upon obsolete notions of fixed identity for participation rights in a democracy premised, in many ways, on changing identities. People change their minds about politics, which is why we have elections every few years. People frequently move, or get evicted, or foreclosed on, and change addresses. Names change when people marry or get divorced. Names and appearances can change when people undergo a gender transition or come to identify as “non binary,” falling somewhere between genders.

None of these changes invalidate people’s eligibility to to cast votes, but voter ID laws certainly make elections tougher for the people experiencing these transitions. And few voters have as much trouble on Election Day in voter ID states than transgender people. The UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute offers some estimation of those unique burdens in its new report “Voter ID Laws and Their Added Costs for Transgender Voters”:

It may be difficult and costly for a transgender person to obtain photo identification that accurately reflects their gender and appearance after they have transitioned. Updating forms of ID with a change of gender is a unique responsibility that transgender people bear in order to vote in strict photo ID states. The processes involved in updating IDs have costs that impose disparate burdens on transgender Americans who wish to vote in these states. These costs are significant.

Not only is it a problem for us but anyone else who have changed their name as the article said either by marriage or divorce or whatever reason. Many people can’t take time off from work or they have to use public transportation to change all their paperwork in time for the elections.

Those who are able to finance and finagle all of this then have to worry about navigating the courts, which in many voter ID states, have the power to determine whether a person’s gender transition is legitimate enough to change their government-issued ID. The Williams Institute report gives an example of what a transgender voter in Kansas will have to go through to obtain the necessary ID to vote after transitioning:

Two forms of ID that are accepted when voting in Kansas include a driver’s license and a non-driver ID card. In order to update the gender marker and change the photo on one of these forms of ID, a transgender person has two options. They may obtain a court order of gender change and submit this along with their current driver’s license or ID card and pay a replacement fee ($16 for a driver’s license or $12 for an ID card) at a driver’s licensing exam station. It is not clear what the process is for obtaining the court order of gender change, and localities likely address this issue differently. There are costs for filing a civil petition in court, in addition to costs associated with obtaining copies of the order and providing necessary documentation to the court. The court docket fee set by the Kansas legislature is $173. This fee, along with an additional surcharge fee and fees set by the individual’s county of residence, is required for a petition of name change, which may be similar in cost to a petition for gender change. A fee waiver based on an individual’s ability to pay is available.

As I mentioned when I went to vote the person at the door checking ID didn’t want to let me in a first because he read me as trans and my driver license said female and it had a picture of a woman on it… me. He looked at my license, looked at me, looked at the license again and when humph and handed my license back.