Tea Party Group Targets Trans Voters

[Shana A]

Tea Party Group Targets Trans Voters

http://transgenderequality.wordpress.com/2012/11/04/tea-party-group-targets-trans-voters/

A right-wing, Tea Party organization called "True the Vote" is training their volunteer poll watchers to target transgender voters. True the Vote's training manual features a transphobic image that claims transgender people are fraudulent voters and should be denied the right to vote.

NCTE Executive Director Mara Keisling said, "It is disgraceful that True the Vote would try to thug anyone into not voting. True the Vote's true agenda is a shameful attempt to scare trans people away from participating in our democracy."

Until this point, the concerted effort by right-wing, tea party groups to restrict voting rights with new Voter ID laws only inadvertently affected transgender voters. Only days away from Election Day, 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.

[Snowpaw]

Shocking. Truly shocking. I mean who would expect the right wing to do something like this. We have been told over and over that the right wing are not bigots by a few posters here. I am shocked to find out this was not as they said :O

[Beth Andrea]

The Tea Party is "far right". I'd like to think that we can tell the difference between a fringe group and "the mainstream"...

That being said, I welcome their efforts to intimidate. I have the Law--and a .45 a large bouquet of flowers--on my side.

[Snowpaw]

The Tea Party is "far right". I'd like to think that we can tell the difference between a fringe group and "the mainstream"...

That being said, I welcome their efforts to intimidate. I have the Law--and a .45--on my side.

Better to be suspicious  than to be complacent I think. Feel free to be complacent though. That .45 will probably land you in jail if you tried to use it anyway, given that they likely have the law on their side as well.

[Devlyn]

Oh, these whippersnappers don't know anything sbout tea parties. A real tea party is all fun and games until someone loses a colony.

[Hikari]

There is a great deal of hate in this world, the tea party finally allowed many right wingers the ability to channel thier hate in way, that seems acceptable to them and organized.... Of course there are militant PETA and Greenpeace people who are much the same on the left, they seem much more harmless to the political process as they seem to focus on specific actions (I.e. whale hunting, wearing fur, etc). God forbid if they organize together under an umbrella organization like the tea party we would be even more divided than we are now.

The transgender community needs to do what it can to reach out and make sure we all understand our rights when it comes to voting in our state, territory or district.

[Ms. OBrien CVT]

They can bite me.  Already voted.  By mail.

[Vicky]

I was an actual poll worker in my former name and persona, but for the next election I am going to apply to be a poll worker again.  Since its a county paid ($50.00) job, my gender status is protected by our laws here.  Be all sorts of fun to run up against a Tpartier with my county precinct worker ID in hand.  I am registered on the basis of DL with female name but M gender information, and I know our polling place roster does not list the M on it, but if it did, well that cannot be challenged and I have a civil rights complaint protection, plain idiocy does not have that. 

[Devlyn]

Really? Shooting someone over a silly piece of paper called a ballot? Can we ratchet this down a bit? Hugs, Devlyn

[Beth Andrea]

I was unable to find any open hostility on the part of the TP (as implied by the original link)

The Tea Party website

The "True the Vote" website

The original site had an image which suggests TS fraud may occur:



But on the TtV site, I could not find that image. Is it there, and I just missed it? Or is it a made-up image, designed to instill fear and hatred against the TP?

[Beth Andrea]

Really? Shooting someone over a silly piece of paper called a ballot? Can we ratchet this down a bit? Hugs, Devlyn

No, "intimidation" and "violence" is not usually done with a ballot, Devlyn. The kinds of intimidation and violence that the far-right is accused of involve beatings, baseball bats, knife slashings, etc.

Talk to any black person who could've voted in 1963, and ask about "intimidation."

At any rate, yes I will "rachet my tone" down a notch or two.



*hugs* (don't worry, the safety's on LOL)

[MaidofOrleans]

Most Tea Party members are Christians and they dislike big government.

But I ask, how can you dislike big government when you swear loyalty to the biggest government of them all?

[michelle]

As you see in my picture, this is how I went to vote in Florida.  The pole workers look at my driver's licence which says male.   They look at my senior bus pass.   The elderly lady looked at me and smiles.   Then she goes through the process of processing me to get my ballot.  I had no problems.   I just went the first day I could vote.   There was a line out the front door of the library where we early vote.   I usually get no dirty looks, even if people call me sir.    I am just consistent in how I dress and present myself.   

Like I have found with lots of other times I crossed the you don't cross lines of my life, crossing that line I have found that most of my fears have been imaginary.   

Of course I live a pretty safe life, going out in public with the other females in my family and my young son.    Of course I live in an area of northern Florida along the Atlantic Ocean which gets lots of tourists.   And being almost 66 this month, I have found that the older I have gotten the more invisible I get.

[ElusiveAppellation]

Sadly, this isn't surprising, but it does confirm my cynicism about our 'democracy'. Then again, everything from corporate lobbyists to the counterproductive, polarizing effect of a bipartisan system makes me cynical, so meh.

[Stephe]

I was unable to find any open hostility on the part of the TP

The original site had an image which suggests TS fraud may occur:



But on the TtV site, I could not find that image. Is it there, and I just missed it? Or is it a made-up image, designed to instill fear and hatred against the TP?

It appears it came from a manual they distribute in print to poll workers, which isn't on their public site or you need their log-in to access.

Are you really shocked these people would be anti-LBGT? Or would assume that NCTE Executive Director Mara Keisling made this up and that the tea party right wing extremists wouldn't do something like this?

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/religion/christianity/catholicism/tea-party-looks-overturn-lgbt-rights-omaha-nebraska

Support these people and they will crush your civil rights..

[Snowpaw]

Really? Shooting someone over a silly piece of paper called a ballot? Can we ratchet this down a bit? Hugs, Devlyn

I want one of those joker bang guns. I know I know off topic :S

[justmeinoz]

It would be interesting to see what would happen if they come across a large masculine cis-woman with facial hair and try anything.  You really need compulsory voting over there.

They are not gentlemen. A gentleman would never doubt a lady's word.

Karen.

[twit]

I'm not so sure they are targeting people who are trans just because of that image. It could just be an easy representation for them to show someone in disguise to cast an illegal ballot in another person's name.  Looking at the image, you have an id that is obviously for a woman and then you have a burly looking guy in a dress to show that you need to match people to their id's properly where it is required.

I'm just concerned our community looks for issues where there really are none and it could cause us to lose credibility over time.

[dalebert]

It's sad. I sort of loosely followed the Tea Party, reading their articles and such, when they started out and seemed primarily a libertarian-ish group. Even then they weren't libertarian enough for my tastes so I never was interested in getting involved. When the right-wingers first started showing up and trying to steer them into attacking social issues, they were having conflicts and the original tea-partiers were telling them to GTFO. It was no use, of course. They kept showing up in greater numbers. It's an effective strategy of the primary two parties to overwhelm and usurp smaller political movements. And now it truly is a right-wing organization and has no hope of changing the status quo in any substantial way.

[MaidofOrleans]

I'm not so sure they are targeting people who are trans just because of that image. It could just be an easy representation for them to show someone in disguise to cast an illegal ballot in another person's name.  Looking at the image, you have an id that is obviously for a woman and then you have a burly looking guy in a dress to show that you need to match people to their id's properly where it is required.

I'm just concerned our community looks for issues where there really are none and it could cause us to lose credibility over time.

If that's the case, how stupid do they think the people they are training are?