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Getting Disenfranchised
Sep. 25th, 2012 09:50 pmA couple of weeks ago I looked myself up on my county's voter lookup site to make sure I was still registered to vote. There was no reason I wouldn't be, or so I thought, since I moved to my current address not too long before the primary election in May, and I voted in the primary election. Nothing changed in the meantime. But the voter lookup page said it couldn't find me as a registered voter. Since it's keyed on house number, birthdate, and zip code, I thought maybe the system couldn't handle apartment buildings (though that would be exceedingly odd) and put off doing something about it for a while.
Today, I called the Santa Clara County register of voters and once I figured out how to get through to a person, the person confirmed that I was in the database as an "inactive" voter. He couldn't explain why that happened, but was able to "reactivate" me on the phone.
If I hadn't thought to take the action to check whether I was registered or not, I probably would have showed up to vote on Election Day and found I wasn't able to vote. I still don't know why I was made inactive in the records. Again, my address hasn't changed since the last time I updated my voter registration information. I'm wondering if the issues I had with the DMV challenging my gender had anything to do with it. Like I explained, those issues were resolved in my favor (or really, in favor of accurate information on ID). But maybe when the DMV flagged my record as being suspect because "two different people" (my old name and my new name) had had licenses with my Social Security number, they also alerted the registrar of voters to disenfranchise me? I'm not sure what would have happened.
In any case, whether you're trans or in any other minority group, or not, it's worth making sure you're registered to vote, if you're someone eligible to vote in the US.
Today, I called the Santa Clara County register of voters and once I figured out how to get through to a person, the person confirmed that I was in the database as an "inactive" voter. He couldn't explain why that happened, but was able to "reactivate" me on the phone.
If I hadn't thought to take the action to check whether I was registered or not, I probably would have showed up to vote on Election Day and found I wasn't able to vote. I still don't know why I was made inactive in the records. Again, my address hasn't changed since the last time I updated my voter registration information. I'm wondering if the issues I had with the DMV challenging my gender had anything to do with it. Like I explained, those issues were resolved in my favor (or really, in favor of accurate information on ID). But maybe when the DMV flagged my record as being suspect because "two different people" (my old name and my new name) had had licenses with my Social Security number, they also alerted the registrar of voters to disenfranchise me? I'm not sure what would have happened.
In any case, whether you're trans or in any other minority group, or not, it's worth making sure you're registered to vote, if you're someone eligible to vote in the US.
