Voter Suppression Effort Targets Transgender People

A group called True the Vote is training volunteers to target transgender voters as sources of fraud, says the National Center for Transgender Equality.

Transgender citizens already face difficulties in voting because of voter ID laws in several states, but now a Tea Party–affiliated group is training volunteers to single out trans voters.

A training manual for a group called True the Vote “features a transphobic image that claims transgender people are fraudulent voters and should be denied the right to vote,” says a press release from the National Center for Transgender Equality. Until now, voter suppression efforts “only inadvertently affected transgender voters,” notes the NCTE, but “the discovery of True the Vote’s training manual marks a shift by right-wing groups to explicitly target transgender people and deny them a right to vote.”

NCTE executive director Mara Keisling called the effort “disgraceful,” adding, “For trans people, voting is not just a right and a responsibility, for us it is also an important part of how we are winning our equality. Scare tactics like this won’t keep us from that.”

NCTE has a guide to navigating voter ID laws called the Voting While Trans Checklist. Find it and more information here.

