By Amy Sherman
September 7, 2021
Are women disproportionately impacted by voter ID laws?
President Joe Biden has pointed a finger at states that have enacted new restrictions on voting, saying that some laws disproportionately hurt different groups of Americans, including women.
"Women are also disproportionately impacted by voter ID laws — especially married women who change their names, or those whose IDs do not accurately reflect their gender," Biden said in an Aug. 26 proclamation on Women’s Equality Day.
A reader asked us to check out Biden’s claim. Biden’s point is rooted in the fact the majority of U.S. women change their names when they get married, unlike men. Some women change their name again after they get divorced. This means that women are much more likely than men to have name variations between their IDs and their voter registrations.
How this plays out for women can vary depending on each state’s laws.
For example, in Texas, voters who have a substantially similar name on their registration and ID do not have to update their records and can sign an affidavit to vote. Indiana law, on the other hand, requires that the name on the ID be the same as the name in the individual's voter registration record. The majority of states have some type of voter IDrequirement, and the trend over recent years has been more strict procedures.
"Across all states there are some additional hurdles women have to jump over if they get married and change their name," said Tammy Patrick, an elections expert at the Democracy Fund. "It’s just a question of how easy that transition is and how many hurdles."
For transgender women, the research we found estimates the number of adults who lack IDs that reflect their current name or gender — not how many were blocked from voting as a result.
Brennan Center found many women lack document with current legal name
The White House pointed to a 2006 telephone survey of 987 voting-age citizens conducted for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, one of the top national advocates for expanding voting rights. The survey asked voters questions about their IDs, such as if their photo ID had their current name, as opposed to their maiden name.
The Brennan Center found that 66% of voting-age women with ready access to any proof of citizenship had a document with their current legal name. (The survey didn’t ask women if they were prevented from voting as a result of lacking an ID with their current name.)
The Brennan Center has not repeated that survey since 2006, but it did point to more recent examples of women who changed their names and were flagged at the polls as a result of voter ID rules.
A TV station reported in 2013 that a Texas district judge, Sandra Watts, had to sign an affidavit affirming her identity after a poll official noticed that she had one name shown as her middle name on her driver’s license and a different middle name on her voter registration card. One of the middle names was her maiden name.
"What I have used for voter registration and identification for the last 52 years was not sufficient yesterday when I went to vote," Watts said.
Watts told PolitiFact: "My legal name is Sandra Lee Watts; however, when I married in 1964, Texas automatically changed the name on my driver’s license using my maiden name as my middle name. Since 1964, my driver’s license reflects the name of Sandra Mathison Watts. That name was not identical to my name on my voter registration and that presented a problem at the time I went to vote."
Wendy Davis, a Texas state senator and candidate for governor in 2013, also had to sign an affidavit because her driver’s license included her maiden name while her registration record did not. Davis had authored the amendment to give voters the affidavit option if their names were substantially similar.
But women were not the only ones who were directed to sign an affidavit. Greg Abbott, then the Texas attorney general and now governor, also signed an affidavit in 2013 when he voted, because his driver’s license showed that his name was Gregory Wayne Abbott while on voter rolls he was listed as Greg Abbott.
What state laws say about name changes
Some states have a more efficient process than others for name changes, said Amber McReynolds, founding CEO of the National Vote at Home Institute & Coalition.
The process can be relatively smooth for automatic voter registration states — places where citizens can register to vote while getting their driver's license. In other states, voters need to take separate steps to update their voter registration.
Some voters may face a time crunch to update their records if they get married close to Election Day.
Read more